Professor Mikko Karttunen uses theory and computation to study the dynamics and fundamental physical mechanisms in soft matter and biological systems, and their interaction with inorganic materials such as carbon nanotubes and minerals. On the methodological side, typical computational methods include large scale molecular dynamics and ab initio simulations, phase field modelling, finite elements, systematic coarse-graining and free energy methods.

He received his MSc from Tampere University of Technology (Finland) and completed his PhD in 1999 at the Department of Physics at McGill University. Prior to joining Department of Chemistry at Waterloo, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at Helsinki University of Technology. He has also been a visiting professor at Fudan University (China), University of Santiago (Chile) and University of Hokkaido in Sapporo.

Education

• PhD, Physics, McGill University, 1999
• MSc, Physics, Tampere University of Technology, 1993