Päivi Törmä

Päivi Törmä is an elected member of the Academia Europaea (2021), the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters (2017), the Finnish Academy of Technology (2011), and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (2006). She received the Order of the First Class of the White Rose of Finland honour from the President of Finland in 2021. During 2017-2021 she was an Academy Professor of the Academy of Finland, and in 2013 she received the ERC Advanced Grant.

Päivi Törmä is married since 2001 and has two children, born 2002 and 2006.

Päivi Törmä graduated with a master's degree from the University of Oulu and the University of Cambridge. She earned a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Helsinki in 1996, under the supervision of Stig Stenholm. She worked as a postdoc at the University of Ulm in the group of Wolfgang Schleich, and as a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Innsbruck in the group of Peter Zoller. In 2001 she became a professor at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She moved to Aalto University (at that time Helsinki University of Technology) in 2008, and was an invited guest professor at ETH Zurich in 2015. Päivi Törmä has served the academic community by leading the Nanoscience Centre at University of Jyväskylä 2002-2005, as director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Computational Nanoscience 2013-2017, vice chair of the Academy of Finland board 2010-2014, and member of the Research and Innovation Council chaired by the prime minister of Finland 2007-2015. Since 2017 she is the chair of the Millennium Technology Prize International Selection Committee.