Researcher of the month is Riku Talja

Riku Talja is currently working at Tiina Liitiäs's Polymer and Chemical Products team at VTT. He is a researcher in the cellulose and hemicellulose themes, which belongs to the research program FuBio (Future Biorefinery) of the Forestcluster Ltd. In 2000, Riku graduated from University of Helsinki. His main subject was polymer chemistry. At 2007 he completed his Doctoral Thesis. In his dissertation, Riku studied biomaterial coatings. Now, he is post doc researcher at VTT.

Biochemicals for protection of goods and health project focuses on finding biologically active natural compounds and development of applications for the use of the compounds. The goal of Riku’s research is to develop barrier coating from wood components. Currently almost all barrier coatings in packaging are made of synthetic materials. The idea is replace the use of synthetic material as barrier coating and use wood components instead. Wood is renewable raw material compared to synthetic material like plastic.

Riku concentrates on developing ways to use to cellulose, hemicelluloses and their derivatives as barrier coating. The idea of barrier coating is to protect the packed product, e.g., from water vapor and oxygen. Barrier coating enhances the product shelf-life. Barrier coating has membranous structure which means ideally nothing comes in or goes out from the package. There has been research in this area for years but not yet any breakthroughs. The best thing in working with industry is the ability to get excellent industry insight into his research work. The benefits for Riku to work in this kind of FuBio program is networking and co-operation. There are also a lot of possibilities to benefit other FuBio program's research.

When not working, Riku spends time, for example, travelling, photographing and playing volleyball.