Day 8 Part 2 – TAMK University and city of Tampere

Day 8 Part 2 – by Bryanna Lawry, Sami Anthony, Sarah Singer and Brynn Price

We arrived at TAMK to a smiling Ulla Haggblom, our host at TAMK. Ulla led us into building six of the campus straight into the cafeteria.  In Ulla’s words, we had a “true Finnish lunch” and were directed to fill up in true Finnish fashion!  Lunch included delicious meatballs and mashed potatoes.  Many students ate more meatballs than one could imagine possible!

Once we all filled up, we headed out to tour the facilities with many of the professors at TAMK.  These professors included Piia Kanto, Katri Salminen and Virpi Ramo.  We learned early in the trip that Finland does not use titles such as Dr. and  that those in authoritative positions go by their first names.  This was definitely a cultural difference that we all worked to get used to!

Our large group of students split into 2 groups for touring.  My group was led by Virpi.  We started by touring the paper labs, which were immediately different simply by the abundance of natural light.  We first saw a demonstration of the coater machine, which is unlike anything we have.  The lab director, Alto, ran the machine so that we could see how it ran.  It was a pilot machine that was being used to run trials of barrier coating technologies.  Dr. Byrd mentioned that this machine is a dream of his for our labs! The rest of their paper labs were very similar to ours, with most of the same testing and paper making instruments. 

We then went to visit Katri’s 3D printing and robotics labs.  There was first a very large robotic arm 3D printer that was used to print a couch that we were able to sit on!  This 3D printer uses a 30% cellulosic furniture, which was interesting to us as paper students.  We then saw many robots and talked about the future of factory automation with these robots.  

Next, we walked to the Talent Factory to work through a workshop on nonwoven materials with Virpi.  This workshop was a part of consumer research for a much larger project that Virpi and other professors at TAMK hope to have published in the next year.  We first took a pretest on our knowledge of nonwovens, then worked through a workshop to talk about sustainability improvement in the nonwovens industry.   We also talked about why companies should care to improve the sustainability of specifically wet wipe products.  We did this in groups of 8 students and then discussed our thoughts as a large group. The results of this project will be posted as a part of the larger SustaFit project, which can be found through Google.

We then met a student at TAMK, as well as reconnected with Eetu, who was an exchange student at NC State last year!  Eetu traveled with a group of students to the hockey game that happened that night as part of the world championships. Ice hockey is the most popular sport in Finland and the city was booming with fans. We were lucky that our time in Tampere overlapped with the USA vs. Austria game. Students gathered in the stadium and at local restaurants to catch USA winning 4 – 1! One group also attended a game the night prior, featuring France vs. Hungary. While ice hockey was not on the official itinerary, it was a great opportunity for students to dive even deeper into Finnish culture and make the most out of our time in Tampere.

The students who didn’t go to the game headed downtown with Tiia, the other TAMK student. These students shopped and headed to dinner. One group headed to a restaurant on the water, called Puisto.  It was a lovely dinner.

Then, as wished for by both the TAMK and NC State professors, almost the entire group headed to Heidi’s Bier Bar, where we shared in a night of karaoke, laughs and dancing to celebrate the large success of this trip!