Steering Committee

Juha Peltonen has completed his master’s, licentiate, and doctoral degree at the University of Jyväskylä. He did parts of his postgraduate studies in Canada at the University of Waterloo, and his postdoctoral research at Western University. Juha works as the director of Helsinki Clinic for Sports and Exercise Medicine and as a visiting scholar and as a docent of exercise physiology at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the acute and chronic exercise responses of the circulatory and respiratory systems, the effects of training and partial pressure of oxygen on these systems, and altitude training. Juha acts as an expert of altitude training for many sport teams and individual athletes. His own sports background is from competitive rowing where he placed 12th at the world championship level and 2nd at the Nordic Championships. After his sporting career Juha worked as the head coach of the Finnish national rowing team.

Simo Tarvonen has a master’s degree in sport and health science from the University of Jyväskylä. He started as a substitute physical education teacher at the Mäkelänrinne Upper Secondary School in 1995 and later became Finland’s first lecturer in sports coaching. He’s been the vice principal in charge of sports since the beginning of 2000. Simo is also the CEO of Urhea foundation that directs the Metropolitan Sports Academy Urhea, that enables talented, professional, and elite athletes to pursue success in their sports while building a successful educational path and working career. Urhea network includes over 6000 athletes and over 200 coaches. Simo had a sporting career in squash where he managed to win the 1990 European Team Championships. He began coaching during his active player career and continued coaching the Finnish national team after his career. In addition, he has been a strength and conditioning coach for athletes of varying sports.

Dr. Dominique Gagnon is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Sports and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä since 2022 and the Research Director at the Helsinki Clinic for Sports and Exercise Medicine since 2021. He obtained his PhD in the field of Biology of Physical Activity in 2014 from the University of Jyväskylä and a postdoc in molecular physiology form the University of Oulu, Finland. He was an Assistant Professor at Laurentian University, and a Research Lead for the Center of Occupational Safety and Health in Sudbury, Canada from 2015-2021. He has published 26 peer-reviewed article and has over 50 presentations worldwide. His research aims at elucidating the influences of thermal stress on oxygen transports mechanisms and skeletal muscle metabolism during exercise. He is the Co-Founder of the Environmental Exercise Physiology Program (EP2-FINLAND), a national-level program to support athletes, military and occupational personal, and the general public for their education in relation to environmental influences on performance, health and safety.

Jani Vaara is an adjunct professor of physical performance at the Finnish Defence University. His research focuses on soldiers’ physical load, recovery, and training optimization. This research includes the vast effects of different environmental conditions on the aforementioned research topics. In his doctoral thesis and the following postdoc research Jani researched the relationship between physical activity and health on Finnish soldiers.

Jere has completed his master’s degree in exercise physiology at the University of Jyväskylä in 2022. Before his career in exercise physiology, he worked for over 10 years as a firefighter and rescue diver. In EP2 Finland Jere acts as an expert of development and education tasks. Previously he has done research on special force soldiers’ physical performance in winter conditions, and he has a diverse interest in physical performance under different environmental conditions. His own background in sports focuses on strength sports, and he still competes in powerlifting at the national level.

Esa works as an expert of sports physiology at the Finnish Institute of High Performance Sport KIHU in Jyväskylä. During his career he has worked in many varying research and development projects, but the last few years his work has been mainly supporting high level athletes and coaches. In his PhD thesis Esa discussed the effects of physical and psychological stress on heart rate variability. Esa has been able to use this knowledge with athletes up to the Olympic level, assessing and monitoring stress and recovery of athletes. Esa has spent a considerable amount of time testing and developing testing methods for endurance performance. From 2018 onwards Esa has increased his focus on environmental exposures, when the Finnish Olympic team was preparing for the Tokyo Olympic games in 2020 with the hot and humid environment in mind. This information and knowledge will most likely become increasingly important as similarly hot competition environments are expected in the future.

Vesa Linnamo Received his PhD in biomechanics from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in 2002. Vesa is a professor of sports technology, and he is currently working as the head of the Vuokatti Sports Technology Unit at the University of Jyväskylä. Finland. His current research interests are mostly related to sports biomechanics, especially in Nordic winter sports. Vesa has worked in different positions in University of Jyväskylä since 1992. In addition, he has almost 30 years of experience in basketball, including 8 years as a player in the top Finnish league and over 20 years as a coach in different adult and junior series. During his academic career Vesa has written 102 published peer reviewed international original articles and 43 chapters in books and as well as been the editor of books/special issues. He has been invited to lecture at 49 international and 28 national events and he has served as a chair or co-chair in 11 international congresses or seminars. Vesa has been the project manager / principal investigator in over 30 projects. Lastly, he has supervised 11 PhD students and with 5 ongoing.

Dr. Christina Kuorelahti is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Sports and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä since November 2023. She performed her doctoral studies in the Biology of Physical Activity with a specialization in the field of Exercise Physiology. Her PhD work focused on monitoring the development of young endurance athletes, 15-19 years of age, by investigating many sport and health-related variables including sleep, HRV, perceived stress levels, hematological values, and various performance-related measures. In addition to research work, she has 8+ years of experience coaching junior and senior cross-country skiers at both the national and international level. With regards to the Environmental Exercise Physiology Program (EP2 – FINLAND), she is a content expert for the EP2 team.