The 2025 award of the Pirkanmaa Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation has been granted to Professor of Chemistry Arri Priimägi for his work on the interaction of light and material, and for boundary-crossing research leaps. The award is valued at €15,000. (Pirkanmaan Kulttuurirahasto 8.5.2025)
Arri Priimägi (born 1980 in Tallinn), who works at Tampere University, is a bold and boundary-defying researcher whose field lies at the intersection of chemistry, materials science, and photonics.
Priimägi has established and leads the international, multidisciplinary, and high-level research group Smart Photonic Materials. The group focuses on soft, light-responsive materials that change their properties when exposed to light.
“It’s like giving a material a remote control – by directing light at it, you can make it move, change shape, or interact in new ways,” Priimägi explains.
Together with his team, Priimägi conducts fundamental research on materials and methods that may potentially be applied in a wide range of fields and environments, such as soft robotics, advanced optical systems, and biomedical applications. Concrete applications could include autonomous soft robots, display technologies for augmented and virtual reality, human physiology modeling, complex disease research without animal testing, and smart drug delivery systems.
Award 2025
The 2025 award of the Pirkanmaa Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation has been granted to Professor of Chemistry Arri Priimägi for his work on the interaction of light and matter, and for boundary-crossing research leaps.
Photo: Jonne Renvall
Priimägi completed his master’s degree at Tampere University of Technology in 2004 and his doctorate at Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) in Espoo in 2009.
At the beginning of 2019, he was appointed professor at Tampere University. During his career, he has also worked at Aalto University, the scientific and technical university Politecnico di Milano, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Priimägi has actively sought and initiated new collaborations at Tampere University, in Finland, and internationally. He has received funding from several highly competitive programs of the European Research Council (ERC) and is currently part of the Academy of Finland’s Centre of Excellence LIBER (Life-inspired Hybrid Materials) and the flagship project PREIN (Photonics Research and Innovation).
Since 2024, Priimägi has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.