Fulbright Finland News Magazine
The Fulbright Finland Foundation collaborates with a broad range of universities, research agencies, non-profit organizations, and private foundations to foster opportunities for study and research exchanges between Finland and the U.S. The agreements are always tailored to align with the specific goals and priorities of the Foundation’s partners, ensuring that the solutions are created to meet each partner’s unique needs.
Since 2017, KAUTE Foundation and the Fulbright Finland Foundation have been collaborating to support Finnish doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from the fields of Economics, Business, and Technology to carry out research projects in the U.S.
So far, 12 grantees have received the Fulbright-KAUTE Foundation Award for their projects aiming to promote sustainable renewal of Finnish business and society.
Doctoral student Larry Abdullai from LUT University and Postdoctoral Researcher Emmanuel
Abu-Danso from the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio are the Fulbright-KAUTE Foundation awardees for the academic year 2024-25. Their projects focus on the sustainability of emerging technologies and innovative methods to extract critical metals from wastewater streams.
Larry Abdullai is a visiting student researcher at the University of Michigan. “My research examines how IT companies in Europe and U.S. adopt sustainability practices through collective stakeholder engagement, addressing pressing global challenges such as social inequality, ethical business development, inclusive software innovations, and employee wellbeing,” Larry explains.
“The research provides a fresh perspective on the critical yet often overlooked aspects of human-centric and ecosystem approach to IT and sustainability. It offers valuable insights for policymakers and industry leaders, potentially reshaping how tech companies approach sustainability,” he adds.
Emmanuel Abu-Danso is hosted by Ames National Laboratory in Iowa. “Critical metals are strategic feedstock for almost all industries. They have been assigned a criticality matrix in the near future due to their economic importance, increased demand, and potential supply risk since they are non-renewable,” Emmanuel says. “Governments have therefore issued directives to ensure sustainable and continues supply of critical metals. One sustainable strategy is ‘mining’ of critical metals from wastewaters of extraction industries and industries that use critical metals using smart alternatives.”
“My Fulbright project, which is in the field of materials development and environmental technology, is a study on the development of geo-inspired composite materials where materials that mimic nature’s geological minerals are used to capture and recover critical metals from wastewater streams,” Emmanuel says.
“To achieve this, an interdisciplinary collaboration of experts from Finland and the U.S. have been combined to achieve this goal for a sustainable reuse of mine wastewater and protecting the environment. This Fulbright-KAUTE Foundation award has given me an enormous opportunity to undertake this critical project which will also help in advancing my research career.”
Read the whole Fulbright Finland News magazine 2/2024!
