Jukka Tuhkuri

The 2023 POAC Founders Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Professor Jukka Tuhkuri.

Jukka Tuhkuri has a long and distinguished career in ice mechanics and arctic marine technology research. He has studied, among other topics: fracture of ice, formation and strength of sea ice ridges, ice failure process against inclined structures, and crushing of ice. His research helps to understand the ice loads on ships and marine structures. Jukka has conducted numerical work using the discrete element method, while having a strong focus on experimental research including laboratory experiments in the Aalto Ice and Wave Tank, and field experiments in the Arctic and the Antarctic. In 2022 he was onboard the research vessel S.A. Agulhas II as a member of the Endurance22 expedition that discovered the wreck of Ernest Shackleton's lost ship Endurance at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

Jukka has attended almost every POAC conference since the late eighties, has authored and co-authored a large number of POAC papers, and has presented two keynote lectures. Through the years he has promoted POAC, supported it financially through students' attendance in the conferences, and chaired many conference sessions. He was the chairman of the Scientific Committee and member of the Organizing Committee of POAC'99, and organized POAC in 2013, both in Finland.

Jukka has been a professor of solid mechanics at Aalto University since 2001, was a visiting scientist in Canada and USA, and has spent a sabbatical at UCL in the UK in 2017-2018. He was instrumental in positioning Aalto University (formerly Helsinki University of Technology) as a globally known university where ice mechanics research is conducted. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Cold Regions Science and Technology and was recently nominated to be an Honorary Professor at University College London, Department of Earth Sciences.