Professor Juha Pekkanen, MD, has been the head of the Environmental  Epidemiology Unit at the Department of Environmental Health at National Public Health Institute, Finland since 1991. He is also part-time professor of Environmental Medicine at School of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, University of Kuopio, and Head of the Graduate School in Environmental Health.

Currently his three main research interests are the exposure and health  effects of particulate air pollution, the epidemiology of asthma and  allergies, and environmental health risk analyses. Juha Pekkanen has published  225 original peer-reviewed articles and has supervised 10 finished PhD-thesis  projects (9 on-going).