PoDoCo brought out the passion for customer projects
Project Manager Oona Korhonen was hired at Measurlabs through PoDoCo program. Photo: Measurlabs
Oona Korhonen united with Measurlabs for a PoDoCo project. The match turned out to be a perfect one: Korhonen got a permanent position at Measurlabs after one-year PoDoCo grant and she feels passionate about her job as Project Manager.
“When I finished my PhD, I hoped to find a job that would allow me to learn beyond my field and I was thinking of even trying something completely new. PoDoCo project at Measurlabs turned out to be an excellent fit; I was able to figure out my professional interests in a company after a long time in academia, while being productive at the same time. The PoDoCo project enabled a smooth transition from a researcher to an expert as one can utilize the skills from academia while learning the requirements of industry at the same time,” says Korhonen.
Work at Measurlabs made her find new qualities.
“I had very little experience in customer projects, and it turned out that I absolutely love solving problems for clients and developing the internal processes to make the work more efficient.”
Background in biobased materials and cellulose
Oona Korhonen found Measurlabs through her network. She got interested by the company’s innovative perspective towards analytical services, which is quite a conventional area of business.
Measurlabs offers testing services for product developers and quality controllers in an easy and customer-friendly way. It offers the best analyses of more than 300 laboratories as one service and has all analysis methods available. This means that understanding the individual characteristics in each field is crucial for success and according to Korhonen, this is what makes the work so interesting.
“My background was mostly in biobased materials and cellulose, and with Measurlabs I had to start understanding analytical requirements in other fields as well. The experience has added to my professional experience in a very useful way. I have had the chance to deepen my understanding of the biomass-industry and work with very interesting clients in that field. In addition, however, I have also had the chance to learn a lot about for example industries related to medical device biocompatibility and antimicrobial products and the analysis requirements there.”
The project has involved a lot of learning, which has been great with a supportive team. At Measurlabs Korhonen works with other specialists of material science and analytics background, but from different fields.
“The fact that people have different backgrounds has been very educational and interesting. One learns a lot when working with people with different expertise as everyone has a slightly different angle to each challenge. We collaborate a lot with cases and help each other, so expertise is shared and everyone can learn from each other continuously.”
Try new thing with lower risk
For what kind of cases could you recommend the PoDoCo program for other companies, based on your experiences?
“Internal development cases when a company wishes to try something new or find new knowledge in a field it does not have the expertise for internally. An expert with fresh perspective can bring great value to the company, but as this kind of internal development cases can be risky, since you never know if the found information can be transferred to profit and how fast, PoDoCo program is a great option for the companies to try new things with lower risk.”
