Background: Petri received his double PhD degree in Materials Science and Chemistry from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and Flinders University in Australia (Synthesis of Conjugated Polymers and Small Molecules for Organic Light-Emitting Devices and Photodetectors, 2019). He was a MSCA fellow and the first PhD candidate to initiate a cotutelle programme between Chalmers and Flinders, supervised by Prof. Ergang Wang and Prof. Mats Andersson, respectively. After his PhD, he joined University of Cambridge in the UK to work on luminescent radical semiconductors in the groups of Prof. Hugo Bronstein and Prof. Sir Richard Friend, supported by prestigious research grants such as the European Commission’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (years 2019–2024). In 2024, he received the highly competitive Academy Research Fellowship from the Research Council of Finland (ranked 1st by the scientific panel) and started his independent research career at Aalto University.
Research area: His research focuses on development of organic semiconductors and finding new ways to utilise their magnetic, electronic and optical properties in optoelectronic applications. This covers light-emission and harvesting, charge transport and storage, and spin memory. He is particularly interested in organic radicals that contain an unpaired electron, spin doublet, in their ground state. Incorporation of radicals into conjugated molecules gives an unmatched level of synthetic tunability through which spin-spin and spin-optical interactions can be controlled. This is done in exclusively light materials that are free of costly/toxic metals. His interdisciplinary research merges experimental synthetic chemistry and computational chemistry tools as well as myriad characterisation methods which aid materials design for different target applications. He develops research topics that aim at answering global challenges in sustainable optoelectronics technology through collaboration in-house and externally with some of the world’s leading research groups in the field. Current project: Organic Radicals as Electrochemical and Photochemical Energy Materials (RADICHEM2).
Accomplishments: He has received major research grants from Finnish, Swedish and European funding bodies which have helped him lead his own research projects early in his career. He has developed collaborative research and published important contributions on synthesis of luminescent radicals and their photophysical studies and optoelectronic applications. These include Nature Materials 2025 (), Nature Chemistry 2025 (), Advanced Materials 2025 (), JACS 2024 (), Nature 2024 (), Science Advances 2024 (), Nature Communications 2023 () and Journal of Materials Chemistry C 2022 ().
Hobbies: Petri is a passionate photographer, and he mainly does film photography and film development that he updates on social media. Some of his scientific photos can be found on Cambridge () and Chalmers websites (). He also enjoys running, cooking and live music.
