Group PI. Prof. Heikki Hokkanen
Email: heikki.hokkanen (at) uef.fi
Tel. +358 44 9898131
Prof. Heikki Hokkanen is currently a visiting research professor at the Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio campus. He is professor Emeritus of agricultural zoology at the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki. He holds a Lic. Phil. degree in ecology and natural resource management (1978. Univ. Jyväskylä. Finland), and a PhD in applied entomology (1983, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA). After his PhD Heikki Hokkanen stayed for extensive periods as a visiting scholar at the Institute of Biological Control (Darmstadt, Germany), CABI Institute of Biological Control (Silwood Park, UK), University of Kiel, Germany, and at the OECD Directorate for Agriculture (Paris, France). In Finland his main work has been carried out first at the University of Kuopio (deputy professor), at the Agricultural research center of Finland (Jokioinen), and since 1990 until 2018 as a professor at the University of Helsinki.
His main interest and focus of work has been on all aspects of biological control, with emphasis on insect control. In recent years his interests have covered pollinators, and plant-derived bioactive compounds with an aim at plant protection applications. He has a long track record of coordinating international collaborative research, e.g. over ten years at the OECD Directorate for Agriculture (Paris). He coordinated the EU-project ERBIC (FAIR5), coordinated the FP7 project ‘ForestSpeCs’, and has participated in five other EU-RTD projects. Hokkanen is an active player in scientific publishing: Editor-in-Chief of BioControl (1997-2006); Founding EiC of Arthropod-Plant Interactions (2006-), editor of book series ‘Progress in Biological Control’, all by Springer. He has so far published two papers in the Annual Review of Entomology (1991, 2006). Professor Hokkanen has experience in organizing scientifIc meetings. He was the Chair of the Organizing Committee for the Society of Invertebrate Pathology Annual Meeting in 2004 in Helsinki. This congress gathered around 350 experts to Helsinki, and has been credited as one of the most successful SIP meetings in recent times. Currently he is the President of the Local Organizing Committee for the 26th International Congress of Entomology, to be held in Helsinki in July 2022. In 2012 the International Organization for Biological Control (IOBC-Global) selected Hokkanen as its Honorary Member.
