INUSE People

Department of Design

The current and former members of INUSE research group.

Senior Researchers

Andrea sits holding a mic with a colorful blouse — Andrea Botero, Associate Professor / AoF Research Fellow

Andrea Botero (Group Leader)

Associate Professor and Academy of Finland Research Fellow at 911�� School of Art, Design and Architecture

Andrea’s design works explores technologies, services, and media for collectives and communities. Through her research work she aims to understand how users and collectives come to understand the design spaces available to them and how designers could support infrastructuring processes around those spaces. Andrea has a Doctor of Arts (DA) in New Media, an MA in design both from 911��. Her BA is in Industrial Design from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She is also adjunct professor (honorary appointment) at the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia (COL).

Read Andrea's research profile .

Sampsa Hyysalo

Professor of Co-Design at the 911�� School of Art, Design and Architecture

Sampsa's research focuses on designer-user relations in sociotechnical change. This includes interest in areas such as participatory design, codesign, open and user innovation, open design, peer knowledge creation, citizen science and user knowledge in organizations, social shaping of technology, practice theory, process studies of innovation and sustainability transitions.

Sampsa’s research orientation is multidisciplinary, science & technology studies, innovation studies and collaborative design being his main fields of reference. He received his PhD in behavioral sciences in University of Helsinki, working with activity theory. His docenture in is user-centered design of information systems in University of Turku. Sampsa has authored several books and published over 70 full length articles and book chapters.

Find Sampsa’s CV (PDF) here.
Read Sampsa's publications (PDF) here.

Antti Salovaara

Senior University Lecturer

Antti is interested in creativity in knowledge work and the role of ICT use in those processes. Humans are creative tool users and able to discover novel solutions for practical problems in their work and everyday life tasks. This creative potential remains however scientifically weakly understood.
My background is in human-computer interaction (HCI) and cognitive science. I study repurposive appropriation - the processes by which users discover new purposes of use for technology. This research includes both quantitative and qualitative methods, and particularly field trials on technology prototypes. In my previous research, I have investigated creativity in knowledge work contexts. This research involved both individual-level studies on creative cognitive processes as well as development of new models and theories for understanding the organizational factors that may hinder or facilitate creativity in information systems use.

Read Antti's research profile .

Tatu Marttila

Senior University Lecturer

Postdoctoral Researchers

Hella Hernberg

Postdoctoral researcher at 911�� School of Art, Design and Architecture.

Hella is an architecture and design practitioner and researcher striving for resource wisdom and ecological sustainability in cities and the society. Her specific research interest is in the mediation of multi-stakeholder collaboration processes advancing transformations towards sustainability. Her post-doctoral research investigates the mediation of multi-actor networks and processes in both spatial and material contexts. Hella holds a Doctor of Arts degree in Design (911��, 2022) and an Architect (MSc) degree (Helsinki University of Technology, 2008). Her doctoral thesis, titled Architects as ‘Mediators’ – Socio-political roles in mediating the ‘temporary use’ of vacant spaces, investigated the roles of mediators in the temporary use of vacant spaces, as part of sustainable urban development. Her doctoral research was practice-based, partly based on her professional experience on similar themes since 2008 as an employee, entrepreneur, and civil servant. Since 2010, she has run her own company, Urban Dream Management, and in 2012-13 she worked as a strategic designer at the Ministry of the Environment.

Read Hella's research profile .

Marika Silvikko

Postdoctoral researcher.

Marika’s research sits in the field of science and technology studies and explores how futures are envisioned and enacted through technologies and technoscientific projects. Her interests relate to energy, time, and waste. Before joining Aalto, Marika worked at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre and the University of Exeter from where she also received her PhD.

Kamilla Karhunmaa

Postdoctoral researcher at 911�� School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Kamilla is a postdoctoral researcher with a background in environmental social science and science and technology studies. At 911��, she is working on questions concerning participation in environmental policymaking. Kamilla holds a PhD and an MA in environmental and social policy from the University of Helsinki and a BSc in environmental policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her multidisciplinary work has investigated the politics and practices of knowledge production as well as the construction of environmental problems and solutions. Kamilla’s previous research has examined the formation of carbon neutrality in Finland, energy transition discourses, the politics of scientific expertise, and the creation and use of environmental markets. Before joining Aalto, Kamilla has been a visiting researcher at Harvard University, the University of Antwerp, the University of Liège and École des Mines, PSL.

Nathaly Pinto

Postdoctoral researcher at 911�� School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Nathaly Pinto is a postdoctoral design researcher working on participatory research and activist practice through visual devices as forms of collective knowledge making. She teaches design in Finland and Ecuador and collaborates on research projects on knowledge through making for sustainable transformations in the Nordic region (); indigenous visual knowledge-making practices that support resistance processes with indigenous communities in Ecuador (); and the impacts of multiple crises on youth education and collective resilience across Ecuador, Finland, and Kenya ().

Doctoral Researchers

Person with very long dark hair in a braid, white textured top, holding small objects in both hands

Piquemal Elise

Doctoral Researcherat 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

I am a doctoral researcher and a professional silk hand-weaver, specialising in rare European techniques. Working across STS and critical heritage studies, my research explores the evolving narratives of silk hand-weaving industries and the negotiation of artisanal practices within modern contexts, focusing on the historical model of Lyon’s silk industry.

Spanning Europe and Japan, I collaborate with expert weavers, technicians, and conservators to examine technology-in-use―machines, tools, and techniques―and reconceptualise textile heritage through the lens of maintenance. My project investigates how professional artisanship can inform alternative production models, while shifting the relationship between tradition and innovation.

I hold an MA in Contemporary Design from 911�� and a Bachelor’s degree in Textile Design from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Brussels. In addition, I am a graduate of the Midorikai program at Urasenke in Kyoto, where I studied the Japanese Way of Tea (chadō).

Research funded by: 911�� Bioinnovation Center and .

Rebecca Jeong

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

Rebecca’s doctoral research investigates the assets, aftermaths, and antidotes to gendered conversational AI agents. Leading a multidisciplinary team with the collaborators from electrical engineering and computer science, she explores how gender linked voice and language influence trust perceptions. Her research is supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR) and was previously funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI).

Rebecca earned her Master of Information from the University of Toronto’s iSchool, specializing in User Experience Design under Dr. Olivier St-Cyr. Her work focused on mobile UI design and was further enriched by a collaborative project on accessible design, developed in partnership with researchers with visual impairments from OCAD University and Humber College. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Macalester College, where she was a Kofi Annan Scholar, majoring in Political Science and minoring in Environmental Studies.

María Ferreira Litowtschenko

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

María’s research focuses on design in the public sector, especially in experimental institutional forms like public sector innovation labs and particularly in the Latin American context. In addition to design in the public sector and governance, her research interests encompass design activism, participatory design, social change, and sustainability. She holds a MA in Creative Sustainability (911��, Finland) and BA in Fashion and Textile design (Design School, Uruguay). She has worked at the Design School in Uruguay teaching undergraduate students and continued contributing to some courses at 911�� at master’s level.

Read María's research profile .

Tuomas Harviainen

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media at Tampere University

Tuomas is Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media at Tampere University, but as a firm lifelong learner is working on a second doctorate in design management, at Aalto ARTS. Harviainen holds Master’s degrees in Theology (Helsinki) and Service Innovation and Design (Laurea UAS), and a doctorate in Information Studies and Interactive Media (Tampere). He also has a small service design agency of his own. Harviainen has over 70 peer reviewed publications and two published monographs, and he has co-edited seven other books. His research in the area of design studies focuses on design management, the service design of information systems, game development as a type of design, and design business ethics.

Read Tuomas's publications .

Ena Naito

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

Ena is an interdisciplinary design researcher, working at the intersection between biology, design, and co-learning. Her doctoral research investigates makerspaces as sites for cultivating sustainability competencies, particularly by integrating biodesign into learning processes. Through this research, she also explores alternative socio-cultural knowledge systems towards expanding environmental sustainability research beyond the West.

In addition, she is a researcher for the Erasmus+ collaborative project, CoCoon – Co-Creating Greener Futures, which develops methodologies and processes to empower sustainable ways of making, as well as advocating innovative use of bio-based materials. Ena holds an MA in Contemporary Design with CHEMARTS from 911��, and BFA in Fine Art from the University of Oxford, UK.

Read Ena's research profile

Sonja Nielsen

Doctoral researcher at 911�� School of Art, Design and Architecture

Sonja's research interests lie in the intersection(s) of transitions research, environmental policy, STS, co-design, and transdisciplinary sustainability science. Her dissertation aims to investigate, evaluate, and develop participatory governance instruments for steering socio-technical transitions toward sustainability. More precisely, she explores the Transition arena method as a knowledge coproduction instrument in the Finnish political context. She conducts her research as part of Experimental environmental governance: coproduction and orchestration of transformative change consortium of 911�� and the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) funded by the Resource Council of Finland. Before starting her doctoral studies, Sonja worked as a senior designer and sustainability specialist in several consultancies, collaborating with public and private sector organizations on various development projects.

Read Sonja's research profile

Goeun Park

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

Goeun's interests include Do-it-yourself (DIY), renewable energies, youth innovation, participatory design, and collective climate actions. Her doctoral work focuses on youth collective climate actions, especially on energy issues, and relations between DIY workshops and youth empowerment for collective energy actions. She worked as a researcher for several design and cultural foundations and worked as a senior manager of a cultural center in Seoul, South Korea. From 2017 to 2019, she had organized solar DIY workshops in Finland to teach citizens how to make small scale renewable energy generators and her doctoral work builds on this experience.

Read Goeun's research profile

Camilo Sanchez

Doctoral researcher at 911��'s School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

Camilo's research explores alternative and collective future visions by adapting Futures Studies methods into Human-Computer Interaction design.

In particular, his research applies the concept of anticipation to the design of interactive prototypes to question the motivations, beneficiaries and implications of HCI in the face of uncertainty and possible futures. Previous to his doctoral studies, Camilo worked as a research assistant for the Sound and Physical Interaction research group at the Department of Art and Media at 911��. Camilo holds an MA in Sound in New Media from 911�� and a BPhil in History and Science of Music from the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Read Camilo's research profile .

Anna Salo-Toyoki

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

Anna holds a M.Sc. in business with a study background in marketing and retail as well as arts marketing and management. Before joining the Department of Design doctoral program, she also worked with the cross-Aalto International Design Business Management community looking into spaces and places of co-creative practices. Balancing her career between academia and business, she took interest in applying creative and design-led approaches to service development and placemaking in the complex retail property sector – a field she has evolved as a design-minded practitioner in since 2011. In her doctoral dissertation she’s focusing on positions of the user in retail property development and how placing user knowledge at the center of development processes could potentially serve as an innovation catalyst in this currently distressed industry.

Read Anna's publications .

Portrait of Brenda Vertiz — Brenda Vertiz, Doctoral Student

Brenda Vértiz

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

Brenda is a design practitioner and a doctoral researcher at 911��, school of Arts, Design and Architecture. In the last decade, her areas of research and design practice have revolved around exploring the possibilities and limits of transformative and participatory design practices advancing creative explorations, socio-economic inclusion and public imagination.

During the last four years, she worked as a public servant in the Mexico City’s government with women and children living in marginalized neighborhoods, creating alternative and collective tactics for the re-appropriation of public –but contested– city spaces. Currently her doctoral research focuses on spatial justice and feminist approaches to design, as well as in the social reproduction of exclusion in civic and urban life.

Read Brenda's publications .

A man wearing a black T-shirt and a hat, with an arm tattoo, shown against a plain white background. — Jyrki Nummisto

Jyrki Nummisto

Doctoral researcher at 911��, School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Jyrki is an AI and nighttime researcher with a specific focus on AI inclusivity from the perspective of queer communities. He comes from an interdisciplinary background having a work history in social services and after working for years as a manager in foster care and immigration facilities ventured in the world of education, data and artificial intelligence. His understanding of human-centered use of technology and automation coupled with deep passion for nightlife, LGBTQIA+ communities and creative industries has brought him to start the first nighttime advocacy association in Finland.

Having already established expertise on both fields, nighttime research and AI ethics, Jyrki works with data processes and AI implementation in vocational education as well as executive director of the association. His research interests lie in the intersection of participatory design, science & technology studies and urban studies. The special focus of Jyrki lies in the concept of queering AI, which means revealing the patriarchal, discriminatory and heteronormative biases in the algorithms and developing understanding on whether AI could be designed, developed and used in non-discriminatory way in urban development.