LUT Summer School Teachers

Leonid Chechurin is a Professor for Industrial Engineering and Management department of LUT since 2014. He received his latest degree in 2010 for the dissertation on Mathematical Modeling and Analysis of Dynamic Systems. His work has been published in journals and conferences in the fields of control and system theory and automation, mathematical modeling, creativity and innovations. He has more than 60 publications to his name in these fields. He is the member of international academic communities. He has been responsible for scientific organisation of a number of local and international conferences.

Leonid was employed by leading innovating technology companies like Samsung and LG Electronics as a principal engineer for engineering design group. He has been consulting or teaching at General Electric Global Research Center (USA, Germany, India and Shanghai), Wrigley (USA), British American Tobacco (UK-USA), FMC (USA) and others (in total more than 50 seminars and consulting sessions and several research projects on inventive engineering design) with 10 patent families on his name.

In the last 6 years he has been coordinating several international educational project under EU ERASMUS, Cross Border Cooperation and other frameworks with total budget 1M Euro. One of visible outcomes is the eLearning platform cephei.eu and a number of courses designed in project based and flipped form. Leonid was named as the best LUT Summer School Teacher in 2015 by student's feedback.

Courses: Systematic Creativity and TRIZ Basics;

Maria Elo is an Associate Professor at University of Southern Denmark, Professor at Belt and Road Institute of International Business at Shanghai University, Senior research fellow at University of Turku and Adjunct Professor at Åbo Akademi University.

Maria works on international business, -entrepreneurship and -migration with topics such as internationalization, sustainability, diversity, resources of skilled migrants and returnees, migrant and diaspora entrepreneurship, transnational and family businesses, diaspora networks, diaspora investment and remittances. She has published books and articles, for example, in Journal of World Business, Journal of International Business Policy, Industrial Marketing Management, Regional Studies, Journal of International Entrepreneurship, and International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

Course: Critical issues in International Business and Entrepreneurship - Anticipating global challenges managerially and entrepreneurially

Dr. Subin Im is a George Lester Nations Professor at Gary W. Rollins College of Business at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is also a Department Head of Marketing and Entrepreneurship. He received his Ph. D. in marketing from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1999. He worked at University of Washington-Tacoma, San Francisco State University, and Yonsei University, His primary scholarly interest includes the organizational aspects of innovation management, creativity and innovation, new product development and design for marketing strategy, and research methodology using multivariate statistical techniques. Dr. Im’s articles have appeared in Journal of Marketing, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, and Journal of Business Research, and Psychological Reports among others. 

He has been selected for inclusion in Marquis’ Who’s Who in America s since 2006. He sits in the Editorial Boards of Journal of Product Innovation Management and Journal of Business Research. He has received numerous honors, including the Fulbright Award and the Presidential Award at San Francisco State University as well as Sangnam Research Professor Award at Yonsei.   Dr. Im worked professionally as a market researcher at the Hynix Semiconductor Inc. in Korea, and also as an international banking officer at California banks. 

Course: Creativity, Innovation, Entrepreneurship in New Product Development

Karl-Erik (Kalle) Michelsen is a Professor for Science, Technology and Modern Society at the LUT Business School since 2012. His field of expertise covers technology and innovation studies, business and economic history and strategy research. He is the member of Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters as well as the Finnish Academy of Technology. He has directed and managed several national and international research projects (Horizon 22 and European Science Academy) and organized scientific conferences both in Finland and abroad.

Professor Michelsen has collaborated with several large global companies, such as KONE, Vaisala, MetsoOutotec and Fortum. In addition, he has actively participated in innovation, technology and science policy discourse and coordinated and evaluated higher education projects in Finland and in Europe.

Professor Michelsen has a long history in higher education. He has taught not only at the LUT University, but also in the University of Helsinki and several universities abroad. In 2018 he was named as the Professor of the Year and he has received teaching awards both in LUT University and in the LUT Business School.

Course: Globalizing Business: How to become a global company?

Alex is a university teacher with practical and entrepreneurial mindset. The common interests regarding he’s own mechanical engineering field are laying in different types of sustainable innovations such as energy-efficient & high-performance machines (e.g., various high-speed applications).

At our LUT University, Alex is heavily involved in teaching at multiple engineering mechanics and design related courses. Currently, he is also interested in academic entrepreneurship and in the research of improved methods on how to build an educational ecosystem between school facilities and industrial companies in order to solve the labor shortage issue which is recognized by Finnish technology industry while also promoting general and sustainable economic growth.

Alex also acted as a course manager in TEMEKO-project, which was implemented by the research group of machine dynamics and machine design at Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology. The main objective of the project was to provide participants additional training that would support their working life skills as well as their knowledge about technical mechanics, without aiming for a full degree. The objective was achieved by designing and implementing four different online course packages which provided and enabled equal participation regardless of the social status, previous education, or gender of the trainee.

Course: Climate Action - Advanced Workshop Seminar Course