Greater Helsinki Region hosts several strong research organizations. Top performers include the University of Helsinki and Aalto University in addition to the likes of VTT (Finnish technology research institute) and several sector specific research organizations.
In 2009, there were almost 33,400 R&D personnel in Greater Helsinki region, of which 17,000 in the corporate sector, 10,400 in academia and 5,900 in the government sector. The local inhabitants are the most educated in Finland – for example 43% of Espoo residents (age 15+) have tertiary level education versus 27% national averages.
There are seven universities and seven universities of applied sciences with a total of 95,546 students and 13,848 graduates in 2009. The universities (excluding universities of applied sciences) employed 829 professors/associate professors in 2009. There are several highly cited or otherwise merited researchers in Greater Helsinki Region. The heavyweight researchers operate mostly in the fields with high volumes of publications.
Significant volumes of scientific research are published by researchers in the Greater Helsinki Region – 147,865 publications between 2003 and 2008. Some of the main fields of publishing are computer and information systems, chemistry and materials research, physics, environmental- and geosciences and several fields of pharmaceutical and medical research.
In addition to the educational institutions there are several other key research and research support organizations and networks for the foreign investors to collaborate with. The national research funding bodies are all based in Helsinki.
