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Gerhard Fink, D.Sc. (Tech.) (b. 1982) has been appointed to the position of Assistant Professor at the Aalto University School of Engineering, Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2019. The field of the professorship is Wooden Structures.

Gerhard Fink’s research activities cover several areas in timber engineering and in structural reliability. At Aalto University, Professor Fink will focus on renewing the timber sector with innovative solutions for development of more reliable and efficient engineered wood products. His research will also concentrate on other aspects, such as timber grading and the quantitative assessment of existing timber structures. In his position Gerhard Fink will develop the collaboration between architecture and forest products technology within Aalto Wood group, and with industry, real estate owners, and relevant authorities.

- Through this new professorship, we aim to promote the relationships between research and businesses and the networking of wood industry companies as well as to improve employment and export conditions, says Dean Gary Marquis of the School of Engineering.  The aim of Aalto University is to increase Finnish wood construction expertise and the use of wood product solutions through long-term academic research and teaching, he adds.

Gerhard Fink has worked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich) since 2009, first as research assistant and later as post-doctoral researcher. Since 2015 he has worked, as a scientific employee and project leader, at the Structural Engineering Research Laboratory at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. He has also worked as a lecturer in the field of Wood and Wood Composites in ETH Zürich from 2014. 

Gerhard Fink received his Master of Science (Technology) degree from the Graz University of Technology in 2008. He completed his doctoral degree in the field of Structural Engineering at the Institute for Structural Engineering of ETH Zürich in 2014. The topic of the dissertation was Influence of varying material properties on the load-bearing capacity of glued laminated timber.

Contact information:

Dr. Gerhard Fink
gerhard.fink@empa.ch