Elina Vuorimaa-Laukkanen

I am a University lecturer at TAU and a Docent in Pharmaceutical nanotechnology at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki. I am leading the research team Supramolecular Chemistry of Bio- and Nanomaterials. We use light to study biological processes, phase behavior in solids and solution and to activate drug release processes. We are developing methods to track and analyze the interactions of drug nanocarriers and living cells in situ. 

Our research is multidisciplinary: we need chemists, pharmacists, biologists and physicists to understand the systems we are studying and analyzing the results we are obtaining. Thus, we are actively collaborating with many laboratories and universities. 

We work as part of the Chemistry & Advanced Materials Research Cluster at TAU, the PREIN Flagship on Photonics Research, GeneCellNano Flagship and EVE – Extracellular Vesicle Ecosystem for Theranostic Platforms . 

As a teacher I am responsible of the Physical Chemistry and Laboratory Safety courses in our chemistry curriculum. 

Although balancing between teaching and research is sometimes hard, I would not give up either! I wish to keep getting and giving the aha-experiences for many years to come.

Photochemistry and nanotechnology of self-assembling materials (phospholipids /polymers/proteins/oligo and polynucleotides), time-resolved spectroscopy, fluorescence lifetime microscopy, Langmuir-Blodgett films