Faculty Members

Yong Se Kim is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Technology, University of Turku, Finland. Yong Se Kim received PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the Design Division of Stanford University with PhD minor in Computer Science. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Professor at Sungkyunkwan University. Yong Se Kim is a member of the Advisory Board of the Design Society (designsociety.org) and a member of the steering committee of the Product-Service Systems Design SIG of the Design Society. He is also on the committee of the ServDes (servdes.org). His research areas include Industry 4.0, Design Thinking, Product-Service Systems Design, Service Design, Customer Experience Design and Management, Design for Circular Economy, Design Cognition and Informatics, Design Learning and Design Support Tools.

Jussi Kantola is a Professor, Mechanical Engineering, at University of Turku, Finland, and a Visiting Professor at Poznan University of Technology, Poland. He has MSc in Production Engineering at Tampere University of Technology (1996), and PhD in Industrial Engineering at University of Louisville, US (1998) as well as PhD in Industrial Management and Engineering at Tampere University of Technology, Finland (2006). Earlier he was a Professor, Industrial Management, at University of Vaasa, Finland (2012-2020) and an Associate Professor, Knowledge Service Engineering at KAIST, Korea (2009-2012). He has over 150 scientific publications.

Dr. Elina Jaakkola is Professor of Marketing at Turku School of Economics, University of Turku. She specializes in service research and her current projects focus on topics such as customer experience and journeys, customer/actor engagement, and value driven business. Her research has been published in the leading journals in marketing and service research. She is an Associate Editor for Journal of Service Research and Industrial Marketing Management and serves in the Editorial Review Board of seven prominent journals. She has won a number of international awards for her scholarly activities and was named to the Clarivateʻs Highly Cited Researchers 2021 list in the business and economics discipline.

Asim Rashid is a University Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at University of Turku. Asim has worked as a researcher in design for additive manufacturing at Örebro University earlier. Asim received PhD in Engineering Mechanics from the Linköping University, and master’s degree in the field of product development and materials engineering from Jönköping University. He has also worked in home-appliance industry and contributed to the development of many household products as mechanical engineer. His research interests include  simulation-driven product development, generative design, and design optimization. Asim teaches courses in the Digital Design track at the University of Turku including Digital Design Methodology.

Dr. Evangelos Markopoulos is an expert, entrepreneur, and scholar in Entrepreneurship (Social and Sustainable), Knowledge Management and startup-development and funding. He holds a BA on Computer Science, an MSc on Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence, and an PhD on ICT Project/Investments Management. As a Computer Scientist he worked mainly in the USA and at IBM, at Siemens and at Bell Laboratories of AT&T. In academia Dr. Markopoulos taught for many years in several businesses schools in the UK (QMUL, UCL, U. of Essex, RHUL, SOAS, HULT). Dr. Markopoulos works well on bridging industry and academia with practical research and industrial projects and initiatives.