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Academy Professor Riitta Salmelin from Aalto University’s Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering received the neuroimaging award, the Justine & Yves Sergent award in December in Montreal, Canada.

- Especially now when it is so hard to get proper funding, an international award like this really warms my heart.

The Fund is used to acknowledge the contribution of a female researcher in the field of cognitive neuroscience who has achieved an international reputation. Salmelin is a pioneer in using MEG to research language processes in the human brain.

Salmelin accepted the award in Montreal. On the left, Prof. Yves Joanette, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Aging and on the right Dr. Patrick Cossette, Head of the Neuroscience department of the Faculté de médecine of the Université de Montréal.

Originally a low-temperature physicist, Academy professor Riitta Salmelin has traversed a range of scientific research fields from electrophysiological methods development to neurocognitive language research.

- I ended up studying applied physics but I was also interested in medicine. Hard physics was the right choice for me, I studied biomedical physics as a minor. When I was a summer intern at the low-temperature lab I would have wanted to work with neuroscience, but so many others wanted it too so I decided to work with low temperatures.

- I’ve always been interested in neuroimaging and I worked a lot with the brain researchers at the lab. I had already decided that I would not continue with low-temperature physics because I had a need to do something that was more visible in a shorter time span and where the results were more concrete.

Salvelin is also the senior editor and co-author of the first ever MEG textbook, “MEG, An introduction to methods.

- I’m happy I ended up where I am now. This is my thing.