Millennium Technology Prize to Tuomo Suntola - photos Millennium Talks May 23, 2018

In the an earlier post, photos were shared from the Millennium Technology Prize Gala on May 22, 2018, where Tuomo Suntola received the prize for atomic layer deposition technology.  This post continues from where the previous post (Feb 10) left, and shares photos from the open lecture that Suntola gave on May 23, 2018, at Aalto University.

What is atomic layer deposition (ALD)? The 2018 Millennium Technology Prize winner Tuomo Suntola explains the contents of the lecture to come. (Photo: Riikka Puurunen, 23.5.2018)

Millennium Technology Prize 2018 to Tuomo Suntola - more photos from May 22

On May 22, 2018, Tuomo Suntola was awarded the prestigious Millennium Technology Prize (MTP) for his Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) invention, awarded every two years for a life-changing innovation. Before Suntola, the MTP in 2016 was awarded to Frances Arnold. Without ALD - an invisible technology as such - Moore's law could not have continued, and we would not have the computing power (computers, smartphones) of today. The BALD Engineering and Atomic Limits blogs are good sources for recent views on the impact and development of ALD. For more on the Millennium Technology Prize, please view the Technology Academy Finland (TAF) website https://taf.fi/; next call for nominations will open in April 2019.

Dr. Tuomo Suntola (left) received the Millennium Technology Prize as the inventor of Atomic Layer Deposition technology. In the middle of the photo, Sauli Niinistö, president of Finland (middle), who handed the prize. At the right, Marja Makarow (professor, chair of Technology Academy Finland). The prize ceremony was organized on May 22, 2018 in Helsinki (Kaapelitehdas).  Photo by Riikka Puurunen, shared in Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

As the drafter of the nomination letter, I was honoured to be invited to the gala event & prize ceremony on May 22, 2018. For me, the prize and the event was literally a dream come true. The event was historical throughout. I wished that more colleagues from the ALD community could have shared the event and the joy and pride.

To record this historical event and to share its details with others, as a hobbyist photographer I took many photos and several short videos at the event. Some I have shared in the ALD History Blog post right after the event, in a video collection on Youtube, and in photos released to Creative Commons.

Now I have gone through my collections again and here I am sharing more photos. I link to the already published Youtube and Wikimedia Commons contents, where appropriate. The photos uploaded in Wikimedia Commons have a Creative Commons (CC) licence that allows everyone to freely use and distribute the photos - the only requirement is that you credit the source and if you make modifications, you share the new versions similarly openly (CC BY-SA 4.0). If you would like to reuse some of the photos shared in the blog but which are not in Wikimedia Commons, please contact me directly - you can find my contact info through the Aalto University website.

Espoo, February 10, 2018

Riikka Puurunen

One year of ALD History Blog: some learnings

One year ago, I became a blogger: ALD History Blog was created on October 25, 2015 (it went public on October 28).

ALD History Blog was created predominantly to help in the coordination of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). Before the blog, I used email for coordination and additionally published short notes in Twitter (as @rlpuu) and in the LinkedIn ALD History group. Clear benefits of a blog are e.g. the wealth of contents that can be included (e.g., length of post, links, pictures, videos, ...) and the unlimited internet access/search engine visibility.

Blogging - similarly as the coordination of the VPHA - has brought along many new experiences and learnings. A year after starting the blog, I thought it would be a good idea to summarise the main learnings, to help others who might consider starting a topical science blog.

New page in ALD History Blog: ALD Glossary

July 30, 2016, a new page has been created in ALD History Blog: ALD glossary: abbreviations and Twitter. While I have been thinking of setting up this page for a long time, the rapidly increasing use of Twitter in the ALD community and the recognition of the "best tweet" at ALD 2016 made the need immediate. The glossary lists (link) are not final but just a start; comments and suggestions for improvements are welcome.

For the Twitter hashtag list, I tried to trace back and describe there the first use of the hashtags. Sometimes, this was easy as the hashtag is uniquely used for ALD (#ALDep, #BalticALD, #FinALD40, ...); sometimes, this is more difficult as the hashtag is in multiple use in Twitter (e.g., #ALD2015, #ALD16, #ALD2016, #VPHA). In Twitter, no-one "owns" a hashtag and anyone can start using whatever they like, also one that is already in use. Twitter is by its nature chaotic; good hashtags are keywords which help to navigate through the chaos.

ALD History Blog is half a year - statistics shared

ALD History Blog was initiated on October 25, 2016---exactly six months ago. To celebrate ALD History Blog's half-a-year journey, I want to share some statistics blog's reading. Similar posts were written also when the blog was three months and one month old.

When I started the blog, I had no experience on blogging, only Jonas Sundqvist's invaluable BALD Engineering ALD News blog as an example. I am very happy that I eventually dared to take the step and start the blog. Before entering the statistics, I would like to briefly review some of the learnings.
(i) For the progress of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA, vph-ald.com), the blog has of course been instrumental. We would not have the same good progress without it.
(ii) The blog has given me the opportunity to learn of what it is to have a science project blog, and how one can attract attention to it. I have learnt how important it is to share information of new posts in professional social media. For new posts, which have not been shared this way, half a day can pass without one single person viewing the post. For new posts shared in Twitter and LinkedIn, in turn, readers appear instantaneously. Sharing in Twitter, systematically with a relevant hashtag (#VPHA #ALDep), has certainly further increased the audience of the posts.
(iii) Somewhat after creating this blog, I created a separate Twitter account (@aldhistoryblog) for sharing the posts, thus no more having a need to share them directly through my personal account (@rlpuu). I think that was a good step, helping to keep things organized. Would I in the future again be in charge of some larger scientific project/unit, I would certainly again consider setting up a separate Twitter account as a communications channel.

Then, to the ALD History Blog numbers during the first 6 months of the blog (numbers as of as of April 24, 2016).

ALD history blog is three months old - statistics shared

Today, it is exactly three months since the ALD History Blog http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi was created. After several months of hesitating (related LinkedIn post, March 14, 2015), I started the blog on October 25, 2015, as the need to share the progress in Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) and in general in understanding the history of ALD become overwhelming with the ALD Russia workshop (travel report here). In hindsight, I am glad that I started the blog: there has been plenty of topics to write about (I'd write more if I had more time) and the blog has found an audience, with an all-time average of 44 pageviews per day. For communicating the advances of VPHA to the virtual project group efficiently, the blog is irreplaceable.

Below, I share the all-time (=three-month) statistics of the ALD History Blog as enabled by Blogger: Overview, Post statistics, Traffic sources, and Audience.  Top-five countries in pageviews, in descending order, are: Finland, United States, Germany, France, and Russia. Recognized important referring sites are, for example, Twitter, LinkedIn, BALD Engineering blog and european-ald.net.

Last, I want to share my latest topic of hesitation. Should/could VPHA have its own page in Wikipedia? Opinions; pros and cons? You can share your views e.g. in discussion chain started a few days ago in Twitter.  

Top 10 viewer countries of the ALD History Blog all time Oct 25, 2015 to Jan 25, 2016.

Following a blog by email, how it works

The service used for ALD History Blog, "Blogger", offers the possibility of getting new posts directly in your mailbox. I have tested how this works with ALD History Blog (http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/) as well as with the highly recommended BALD Engineering blog (http://www.blog.baldengineering.com/). Conclusion is that email subscription works very well and I can recommend it to others.

During the first half of 2016, VPHA will be active and there will be many new posts, each sharing something new and taking VPHA in small steps forward. For those not actively following professional social media (LinkedIn and/or Twitter), email subscription would be an easy way to stay up to date with new information.

Baltic ALD 2015, Tartu: travel notes by Riikka Puurunen

The 13th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition, Baltic ALD 2015 was organised in Tartu, Estonia, September 28-29, 2015. Conference chairs were Prof. Jaan Aarik and Dr. Kaupo Kukli. Conference website: http://www.bald2015.ee/. Right after the conference, on September 30, 2015, there was the yearly meeting day of the HERALD COST network on ALD (http://www.european-ald.net/).

I have not visited Tartu before, and it was very interesting to attend this Baltic ALD conference in the historical city of Tartu, where the first report of ALD (then, ALE) is from year 1983. This post in the ALD History Blog finally shares my travel notes from Baltic ALD, both as text and photos. BALD Engineering collected a "photo show" during the event, which can be found here. In Twitter, post and pictures from Baltic ALD conferences can be found back with hashtag #BalticALD.

Colours, colours! The Baltic ALD 2015 conference was organized at the Physicum building of Tartu University. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

VPHA status update 2015-11-18

This status update email below was sent on 18.11.2015 to all VPHA co-authors (38) and registered prospective co-authors (26). 

Would you would like to join the VPHA as a volunteer and as a prospective co-author receive these emails, please send an email to info@ vph-ald.com.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

Things related to the Virtual Project on the History of ALD have proceeded during the previous weeks. Please find below updates regarding:

1.    Status of the ML essay

2.    Travel report from St Petersburg

3.    ALD History blog posts

4.    VPHA in numbers

5.    General scientific ALD history review

6.    Sponsoring of Open Access for the ML essay

BALD Engineering blogs about Tuomo Suntola's overview on ALD

Jonas Sundqvist from BALD Engineering has published a nice blog post discussing the ALD webpage of Dr. Tuomo Suntola, the Finnish inventor of ALD. See the full post at http://baldengineering.blogspot.de/2015/11/tuomo-suntola-overview-on-atomic-layer.html. In the words of Jonas Sundqvist:

"I think that we all today have to thank Suntola and his co-workers like Sven Lindfors < > and others for making all this possible. Just think about it - would we all today enjoy living and working in a fast growing technological field of ALD without this work  that started in the 70´s and persisted through until it went global in the 90´s and beyond until today?"