At the heart of FAME lies the vision of an internationally leading competence centre which will provide beyond cutting-edge methods of inverse mathematics and physics for tackling various sensing, imaging, and modelling challenges arising from industry and society. To advance its goals, the Flagship continuously assesses the state of its scientific and societal activities and potential development needs. In addition to regular self-reflection, FAME makes extensive use of external review processes and expert opinions.
The FAME Flagship’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) comprises of two esteemed members: Doctor Marie E. Rognes, Chief Research Scientist in the Department of Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing at the ICT-focused Simula Research Laboratory in Oslo, Norway, and Professor Otmar Scherzer, Head of Computational Science Centre at the University of Vienna, Austria.
Dr. Rognes’ research interest include, among other things, scientific computing, applied mathematics, partial differential equations, and neuroscience. In addition to her duties at Simula, Dr. Rognes holds the position of Deputy Director of the K. G. Jebsen Centre for Brain Fluid Research at the University of Oslo. Professor Scherzer, who has published extensively on inversion problems, has made significant contributions to, for example, regularization theory, tomography, and the mathematics of imaging. In March 2025, the international Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) awarded Prof. Scherzer the prestigious honorary title of Fellow in recognition of his outstanding scientific work.
FAME organised its first official SAB meeting on Monday, 5 May. The meeting, held at the Kuopio campus of the University of Eastern Finland, was attended by both the Flagship’s leadership and Principal Investigators from all eight partner organisations of the FAME consortium.
The Flagship had the pleasure to welcome Dr. Rognes in-person to Kuopio, a city that celebrated its home team’s fresh championship in the national ice hockey league. And despite the ongoing strikes affecting the Finnish air traffic, Prof. Scherzer was also able to participate in the meeting remotely. At the meeting, FAME presented the consortium’s structure and objectives and offered an in-depth look into the rigorous research being conducted across the partner organisations and the Flagship’s activities focused on societal impact.
In their comments, the SAB members gave praise to the FAME Flagship’s scientific foundation. They saw a lot of potential in the consortium’s resources and networks and emphasized the Flagship’s obligation to utilise its resources responsibly and with ambition. The Research Council of Finland’s Flagship Programme overall was praised as an excellent initiative for the society.
With the upcoming full report by Dr. Rognes and Professor Scherzer, the FAME Flagship will continue to further develop its forward-looking scientific efforts for the good of the Finnish expertise, economic growth, and global wellbeing.
