Fulbright Finland News Magazine
Finns are some of the most tenacious people that I have had the pleasure of meeting. Never underestimate a Finn and never count them out. The Finns have a word that describes this trait, called Sisu. In a series of Finnish emojis the one for Sisu illustrates a girl punching through a boulder. This embodies the Finnish spirit.
My 2020-22 Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair award was a key pivotal moment, following an earlier Finland Distinguished Professor, known as a FiDiPro (2014-19), leading to a semi-permanent presence at Tampere University as a Docent for “Flexible, Thin-Film, Low-Power Circuitry”. But, having exhausted all available distinguished visiting professor funding programs, it became imperative in 2021 that I needed to garner external grant funding to continue my presence there.
However, grant applications to the Research Council of Finland (RcF), would return rejection after rejection, mostly focusing upon my limited presence in Finland to effectively lead a scientific program remotely.
My affiliation with Finland began in 2009, when Professor Donald Lupo, an old colleague of mine from the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research in 1999, became a professor at the then named, Tampere Institute of Technology.
Lupo founded the Laboratory for Future Electronics (LFE) in 2009, and we co-wrote Lupo’s first academic proposal that got funded, beginning my legacy in Finland since 2010, when the project initiated.
From 2010 to 2020, I received six grant rejections, meaning that my relationship with Finland would become a relationship on paper only following the conclusion of my Fulbright.
During my Fulbright in Finland I was able to coordinate with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland to co-write a grant application on advanced printed flexible electronics, pushing the boundary limits of what Mother Nature demands regarding temperature and time of crystal growth that would burn up fragile flexible substrates otherwise.
On this seventh application, I was able to successfully secure a €1.32 million grant from the RcF with VTT, demonstrating my own Finnish Sisu. In that grant’s reviews, they again stated there is a potential disconnect with my being based in the U.S., but they indicated I had demonstrated a nice track record in Finland. I persevered.
This project involves pushing the limits of atomic layer deposition (ALD) for flexible, printed transistors using some novel sintering techniques with ALD that I proposed. This successful grant became the first domino to fall, leading to additional successful grant applications.
A second grant from RcF on sustainable and biodegradable flexible electronics (€1.1M) was also with VTT.
The third grant is on powering flexible electronics through enhanced supercapacitors, where I act as Work Package 3 Leader. Funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, the “Atomic Layer-coated Graphene Electrode-based Micro-flexible and Structural Supercapacitors (ARMS)” (€4.5M) has 10 consortium partner institutions in Sweden, Denmark, France, Spain, and Latvia.
Altogether, I am overseeing about €7M in funding in Tampere, directing a team of postdocs and graduate students with my colleague Matti Mäntysalo.
This transcends the traditional Fulbright exchange, where lasting long-term relationships can be cultivated. Ironically, a recent DNA hereditary test indicated that I am 5.2% Finnish, unbeknownst to me all these years. So, you could say that I had Finnish Sisu written into my DNA all along!
Paul Berger
2020-22 Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies, Tampere University
Professor, The Ohio State University
Watch an interview with Paul Berger on Youtube: https://bit.ly/4rJqmaL
Read the whole Fulbright Finland News magazine 2/2025!
