Henrik Saxen

Short Bio:

Henrik Saxén; Born in Turku/Åbo, Finland, 06/11/1959 Henrik Saxén is professor at the Thermal and Flow Engineering laboratory of Åbo Akademi University in Turku/Åbo, Finland. He graduated from the same university in 1983 with a master’s thesis (with distinction) on Process Control. In 1988 he defended his doctoral thesis (Chem. Eng.) on modeling of the blast furnace. After holding different positions at the university, he became Full Professor in Heat Engineering in 1997 and has since then been the Head of the laboratory, which today has a staff of 20-25 people, of which four are permanent staff. He has given lectures on many topics, including thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, refrigeration engineering, modeling, optimization and neural networks and has supervised more than 90 master’s thesis works and 17 PhD works. Henrik has been a member of the board of the university, the faculty board, and has represented the university and academic community in several foundation boards. He has also been a member of audit groups of other universities. During 1998-2000 he was Dean of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and in 2006-2009 he was Vice Rector (research) of the university. Since 2017, he is Visiting Professor at Shanghai University. As for scientific activities, he has been the reviewer/external examiner of more than 35 doctoral theses in Finland and abroad and a reviewer of 50 different scientific journals. He was a member of the International Scientific Board of ISIJ International, is presently a member of the editorial boards of Heliyon and Metals, and has also been guest editor of several special issues. He has been acting in many organizing committees/advisory boards of conferences and as reviewer for academic positions and project applications in Finland, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Austria, Estonia, Luxembourg, Ireland, Kazakhstan and the Netherlands. Henrik’s main research activities are on mathematical modelling and optimization of industrial processes, with particular focus on ironmaking technology and energy issues. On these research topics he has an active collaboration with academia and industry, both nationally and internationally, and has contributed to eight European projects under Research Funds for Coal and Steel (former ECSC). He has published more than 150 papers in international referee journals (ISI Thomson) and more than 250 conference papers.