At the beginning of February, Jan Lundell started working as the director of LUMA Centre Finland on Kumpula campus. Half of Jan Lundell’s working hours are spent heading LUMA Centre Finland, which coordinates science and technology education in the country, and half on studying chemistry at low temperatures.
Lundell returned to his seat of studying and work of his youth, the University of Helsinki, from the University of Jyväskylä, where he had been a professor for over a quarter of a century. Lundell opened his career in chemistry at the University of Helsinki, where he studied and disserted on physical chemistry, then worked as a post-doc in Jerusalem, after which he returned to the Department of Chemistry after gaining an assistantship in his own field.
His research career continued under various titles as a member of Markku Räsänen’s group. When the Department of Chemistry moved from Meritullinkatu to the new building in Kumpula 30 years ago, Lundell was there, helping with the move.
At that time, besides automatic data processing (ADP), the latest thing was information and communications technology (ICT), and Lundell was one of the first people to employ the new equipment in his research and teaching. When a connection between lab and lecture hall was established, for example, the demonstrations in the lab could be displayed to a large group of students safely.
For a few years, alongside his research career, Lundell acted as head of IT and trained teachers in using computer-assisted programs. He was interested in how to make chemistry instruction more efficient and interesting.
“Simulations, computation, visualisation… The modern equipment could be used to illustrate details in chemistry and help us understand chemistry in many ways. Chemistry research also advanced quickly as computers gained efficiency,” Lundell says.
Two trailblazers on the same corridor
At that time, another person interested in the teaching of chemistry also arrived in the newly built Chemicum building on Kumpula campus – Maija Aksela. Today, Aksela is known as a trailblazer in the field of teaching natural sciences, and the first professor in this field in Finland. She was the first director of LUMA Centre Finland in 2013–2025, and participated in building the first LUMA centre in Kumpula as early as 2003.
Aksela, with a background in chemistry and specialised in teaching, was especially interested in the cooperation between schools and university. The offices of the two like-minded young researchers were on the same corridor. Their background in research and pedagogy clicked well.
“We built a course on molecular modelling for the teacher education programme, for example, and a mentor team for the course consisting of teachers from around Finland. Chemistry teachers are often quite lonely in our schools, and interested in new research findings, so there was a demand for networking,” Lundell says.
Lundell and Aksela started to study how to make chemistry education more inspiring and motivating. How do we make children and young people interested in chemistry as a subject and a career? How do we inform teachers about new research findings? How do we meet the needs of teachers? The work to construct a collaboration network for education in natural sciences had begun.
It is about a quarter of a century since Jan Lundell received a phone call from the University of Jyväskylä, encouraging him to apply for a new post. In 2008, he transferred to the University of Jyväskylä as a professor with special focus on educating teachers.
His work with the national LUMA network still continued. Today, the network covers 11 universities and 13 regional LUMA centres. In Jyväskylä, Lundell was director of the local LUMA centre for 15 years.
Keeping up interest throughout the school system
Lundell summarizes the core of the LUMA work into two things: interesting children and young people in LUMA subjects and developing the skills of teachers in LUMA subjects. He points out that we can develop models and methods of teaching chemistry, physics or mathematics that specifically support the teaching and learning of these subjects.
At the moment, only the universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä offer degree programmes where you can study to be a teacher in mathematics, physics or chemistry at the Master’s stage. At other universities, you have to study the major subject separately and then take the pedagogical courses in the Faculty of Educational Sciences.
“I wish that the teaching education model would be implemented in other universities, as well, to guarantee high-end teaching of these subjects nation-wide,” says Lundell.
He would like to spread the teaching methods developed for schools to the university, as well. University students also need inspiring, rewarding and motivational teaching. Too many students drop out in their first couple of years because they haven’t grasped why the education is necessary or what opportunities it gives you.
“You can keep up interest with e.g. visits or role models. Researchers or students can visit schools or vice versa, people working in the field can visit the university. How should a school student know what a chemist does unless they meet some?”
Freezing molecules
As a chemist and professor, Jan Lundell himself studies the chemistry of low temperatures. If a molecule is cooled down close enough to absolute zero, we can separate the molecules into inert gas crystals and slow them down for precision studies. Light is especially useful for modifying the spatial structure of molecules with surgical precision.
The molecule of formic acid, for example, has two spatial habits. Lundell describes how you can modify the extremely frozen molecule with light in a controlled way so that you can transform the formic from its most permanent form into a higher energy form.
“With the new structure, the chemical features of the molecule change: it reacts differently and may even break down into different materials than the original structure,” Lundell observes.
Half-time researcher, half-time emissary for LUMA teaching. In his free time, Lundell is certain to travel, since he and his wife have two homes; one in Wrocław in Poland and the other in Mänttä in Finland. Their goal is to move the family’s home in Finland to the greater Helsinki area at some point.
If the latest funding application to the Research Council of Finland is accepted, they could also spend more time in Wrocław than a long weekend now and then, since there happens to be a research group there that has collaborated with him for three decades already on the subject of low-temperature chemistry. Good luck!
Written by Johanna Pellinen, Communications Manager, University of Helsinki
The article was published on 11.3.2025 on the University of Helsinki website.
