Awards glory from gaming to Alzheimer research, digital news success and a giant snow castle

International film-making lands in Turku. Production company Filmgate Films has set up an office in the Finnish city and is already doing VFX post-production for upcoming releases. These include the Harry Palmer miniseries, horror-action film The Lair and Living, a drama feature starring Bill Nighly. (Photo: Ross Ferguson) Turku Business Region has written about Filmgate’s arrival.

And the award goes to…professor Miia Kivipelto. Kivipelto has received the 150 000-US dollar Melvin R. Goodes prize for her groundbreaking work on preventing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Together with her team, Kotipelto has studied how a combination of lifestyle interventions can prevent cognitive decline. (Photo: Bengt Oberger, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons) The University of Eastern Finland wrote about her achievement.

A snow castle transforms into snowboarding heaven. SnowCastle is built in the Finnish Arctic every year out of millions of kilos of snow and ice. This year, snowboarder Eero Ettala got a chance to turn the castle into his personal playground. Watch Ettala shred, jib and flip through the giant snow construction on Red Bull’s website. (Photo: Pasi Salminen / Red Bull Content Pool)

A blend of Ugandan roots and Finnish life. Lincoln Kayiwa moved to Finland to pursue a master’s degree and stayed to start his own atelier, which creates collectible design objects from furniture and kitchenware. His work draws from the rich traditions of both African and Nordic art and craft. (Photo: KAYIWA) Read The New York Times’ interview with Kayiwa.

Awards glory for the Finnish superfibre Infinna. It reduces waste by turning old clothes into biodegradable and cotton-like textile fibre. Infinna won the 2nd prize in the Innovation Expected category at the 2021 EARTO awards. The awards celebrate innovations with significant social and economic impact. (Photo: Infinited Fiber Company) Read more on the EARTO website.

Susanna Mälkki is one of the most sought-after Finnish conductors. Currently, she is the chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the first woman to hold the post. Mälkki talked about her work with various orchestras and provocative programming choices with San Francisco Classical Voice. (Photo: Chris Lee)

The Game of the Year has been chosen. Housemarque’s sci-fi shooter game Returnal took home the top prize at the recent Develop: Star awards. The game was also honoured for its visual art. (Photo: Housemarque) Read more on GamingBolt’s article.

More European accolades to Finland. The Donate Speech campaign won the European Digital Audio Project of the Year prize at the PRIX EUROPA 2021 festival. The campaign collects all kinds of spoken Finnish and uses it to help speech recognition and artificial intelligence software to better understand the language. (Photo: Eeva Anundi / Business Finland) Checkout Aalto University’s website for more.

Unique shape, unconventional angles and sustainable build. Designed as a guest house, the all-black Meteorite cabin blends into its surrounding nature and provides warmth without any conventional insulation. (Photo: Facebook / Ateljé Sotamaa) The cabin has been celebrated on Yanko Design.

Twenty per cent of Finns pay to read news online and almost half of them subscribe to Helsingin Sanomat, the largest national newspaper in Finland. Editor-in-chief Kaius Niemi shared how the newspaper has built its digital success with Niemanlab (Photo: GNF / Adobe)

Move aside fitness trackers. The Oura ring measures sleep, health and activity from a user’s finger. The stylish celeb-favourite has just been released in its third iteration, promising enhanced sensor data, such as body temperature and blood oxygen levels. (Photo: Oura) Fast Company has the story.