Home New focus areas for HAMK research

New focus areas for HAMK research

3.4.2025

Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK) has significantly advanced and grown its research activities over the past few years. Currently, around 190 people are working on HAMK’s applied research. The latest addition to the research framework is the focus areas.

The focus areas organise HAMK’s diverse and interdisciplinary research, development, and innovation activities. Each focus area consists of one or more research groups that include experts from HAMK’s research and educational units.

“We aim to do meaningful work and tackle major challenges, such as ensuring a sufficiently skilled and thriving workforce for future labor markets. These challenges can only be addressed by bringing together professionals from various fields and approaching solutions interdisciplinarily and interprofessionally,” reflects HAMK’s Research Director Annukka Pakarinen.

There are eight focus areas in total and they are grouped according to the three key research ecosystems, SmartBio, SmartBuilt and SmartEdu. The new focus areas are summarised at the end of the article.

Solution-Oriented and Interdisciplinary Applied Research

HAMK’s research development is guided by the Strategy of Top Excellence . At the core of this strategy lies mission-driven work, which aims to seek systemic and holistic changes and benefits to address wide-ranging challenges.

The nature of the research conducted at HAMK is solution-oriented, and the approach is interdisciplinary.

“In our research, we look for practical solutions that work in the real world by applying theory to practice and piloting. Interdisciplinarity is an excellent tool in our applied research that supports business life,” explains HAMK’s Research Director Annukka Pakarinen.

The process of developing the Strategy of Top Excellence began at HAMK in 2021 with the question: “Where can we be the best?” The strategy provides long-term guidance for HAMK’s research development. Further details about the research conducted at HAMK can be found on HAMK’s website.