Mihkel Kaljurand
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Mihkel Kaljurand | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1945 (age 80–81) Rakvere, Estonia |
| Citizenship | Estonia |
| Alma mater | University of Tartu |
| Known for | Computerized chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, portable analytical instrumentation, green analytical chemistry |
| Awards | Estonian national research award (1991, 2007) Order of the White Star, Fourth Class (2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Analytical chemistry |
| Institutions | Tallinn University of Technology Institute of Chemistry, Estonian Academy of Sciences |
Mihkel Kaljurand (born 1945) is an Estonian chemist and professor emeritus at Tallinn University of Technology. His research has focused on analytical chemistry, especially computerized chromatography, capillary electrophoresis, portable analytical instrumentation and green analytical chemistry.[1][2] Later overviews of green analytical chemistry have described the 2010 book Green Analytical Chemistry, which he co-authored with Mihkel Koel, as the first book devoted to the subject and an important marker in the field's development.[3][4]
Kaljurand was born in Rakvere and graduated from Rakvere I Secondary School in 1963.[5] He studied at the University of Tartu, graduating in 1973.[5] According to conference and institutional biographical summaries, he received the Candidate of Chemistry degree in 1979 at Leningrad State University and the Doctor of Science degree in 1991 from the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow.[2][6]
Career
Before joining Tallinn University of Technology, Kaljurand worked at the Institute of Chemistry of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, where he was later a senior researcher.[2] He subsequently became professor of analytical chemistry at Tallinn University of Technology and later director of its Institute of Chemistry.[2][7] He is listed by the university as professor emeritus and senior scientist in the Division of Chemistry.[1]
Kaljurand has also been active in academic organisation and teaching. In the final report of the European Union FP7 project IC-UP2, he was identified as the project coordinator while serving as director of the Institute of Chemistry.[7] In a 2025 TalTech interview, he said that one of his main tasks after the integration of academy institutes into the university had been to modernise the teaching of chemical analysis and that he created new courses in instrumental analysis and chemometrics that continued to be taught at TalTech.[8]
His international appointments have included a research visit to a NASA research centre in 1995–1996 and a 2002 Fulbright Visiting Scholar stay at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.[6][9]
Research and scientific contributions
Kaljurand's early work was associated with computerized chromatography and chemometrics.[2][10] This line of work formed part of the research cycle Computer chromatography, which received an Estonian national research award in 1991.[10]
His later work centred on capillary electrophoresis, miniaturised analysis and portable chemical instrumentation. Estonian science coverage reported that his research group developed microdroplet-generation technology for portable automatic analysers and pursued applications ranging from on-site narcotics testing to environmental monitoring and space research.[11][12] A later profile in ERR's science coverage summarised his recent research interests as portable analysers based on microfluidics for detecting illegal drugs and hazardous chemicals without transporting the sample to a laboratory.[13]
Kaljurand has also been closely associated with the development of green analytical chemistry. TalTech reported in 2019 that he and Mihkel Koel had been working on the subject since 2006 and that the Royal Society of Chemistry had commissioned a revised edition of their book.[14] Later histories of the field identified Koel and Kaljurand's work among the contributions that helped establish its principles and strategies and linked the rapid growth of the literature in the subject to the appearance of their 2010 book.[3][4]
