The Faculty Council of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry includes the dean and 18 members and their deputies. The term of the Faculty Council is four years; however, the student representatives are selected for a term of two years.
The agendas and minutes of the Faculty Council are posted on the University’s intranet Flamma for students and staff of the University. A list of Faculty Council members can be found on the same page. To use Flamma, you must log in with your University username and password. If you cannot access Flamma, please contact mmtdk-hallinto@helsinki.fi
All meetings start at 10.15.
Spring 2024
Autumn 2024
The Faculty is led by dean Ritva Toivonen. During the administrative period 2022–2025, the Faculty has four vice-deans, Laura Alakukku, Janna Pietikäinen, Mari Sandell and Anne Toppinen.
Ritva Toivonen holds a doctoral degree and a docentship in forest economics and marketing at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki. She has previously worked in several academic forest and agricultural research and extension organizations as forest economist, research director, director general and CEO. She holds several trustee positions in national and domestic research and business organizations, and she has gained international experience while working at the UN (NY), FAO (Rome) and the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her current research focuses on sustainable use of wood, particularly markets and business ecosystems related with wood products and industrial wood construction, as well as forest tenure and non-industrial private forest ownership. Off-duty she enjoys hiking in forests, other outdoors and life at the family farm.
Laura Alakukku is a professor of Environmental Technology in Agriculture. Her specific research interest is in and she has examined soil management including soil structure, compaction, conservation tillage methods connected to break-crop systems, biological tillage, precision agriculture, and use of continuous measurements systems to examine the soil processes, machine-soil-crop –interactions, and to provide real time data to support farmers’ decision-making. Besides University of Helsinki, Alakukku has worked 20 years as a scientist at MTT Agrifood Research Finland (currently Natural Resources Institute Finland). She is also a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.
Alakukku is Vice-dean for infrastructures.
Janna Pietikäinen is university lecturer of Environmental studies. She received her MSc in general microbiology and her PhD in forest soil science at the University of Helsinki. After receiving her PhD she worked in soil microbiology lab at the Lund University, Sweden for one year. Her research is focused in environmental issues within forestry, food production and soil ecosystems. She has further specialized in interdisciplinary environmental teaching and completed studies in university pedagogy receiving the teacher’s qualifications. She is active as educational developer and has led two interfaculty degree programmes in environmental and sustainability sciences. She was selected as member of the distinguished Teachers’ academy at the University of Helsinki in 2015. In addition, she is an active player in campus sustainability operations and has created student driven environmental projects and campus activities.