Chemistry and Analytics for Circular Economy (CACE), Master of Science (2 yrs), autumn 2026

The structure of the programme can be found here.

The MSc degree qualifies students to apply for Doctoral Studies in Natural Sciences.

The MSc degree qualifies students to apply for Doctoral Studies in Natural Sciences.

The alumni of CACE will meet the needs of experts in the growing fields of circular economy, forest and chemical industries to ensure the recovery, availability, and supply of materials needed by modern society. The expectation of graduates from CACE to find employment in their own field of expertise is high.

In addition to strong theoretical and practical chemistry skills required for circular economy, this programme will support you in developing your business, leadership and working life skills that include, for example time management, communication skills and social skills. This allows employment in private or public sectors as well as in academic research.

CACE has initiated collaboration with Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology for education in circular economy and recovery of minerals and metals. In addition, research groups have established collaborations with Finnish companies operating on chemical and forest-based industries, as well as publicly owned companies in water, energy and waste management sector, and startups in recovery and upcycling of materials. We also collaborate with national research institutes including, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd (VTT) . Collaboration is mainly in the form of shared supervision of Master’s theses and visiting lecturers. The Department of Chemistry also hosts a Center of Expertise for Circular Economy, which is a research network combining high-level research and challenges related to product development in companies. All research groups have national and international collaborations with other universities and research institutes. International mobility of the students is also supported by FORTHEM Alliance within European Universities.

The department and faculty are both very international. All research groups operate at the international level and the working language in all groups is English.

Circular Economy research contributes to the sustainable use of natural resources by enhancing the use of organic and inorganic raw materials. The vast majority of our reserach revolves around green technologies and focusses  on low-carbon solutions, utilization of biomass and recovery of critical raw materials. At the core of the research is the development of innovative recovery technologies by design, fabrication and further fine-tuning of chemically active molecular structures. This enables highly selective recovery of different components even from very complex matrices.

The conducted research encompasses various aspects from a broad range of disciplines including inorganic and organic chemistry, materials research and environmental science. Of particular importance are analytical sciences that play an important role, for example, in identifying valuable raw materials from waste and side streams, and in determining product purity. We collaborate with many national and international research groups and work in close co-operation with several industrial partners. Our research is part of the University interdisciplinary JYU.WISDOM-School of Resource Wisdom with the motto “From waste to highly valorized products”.

The Master’s degree thesis takes approximately five-six months full-time work to complete, including the planning and execution of a project, and writing up the thesis (altogether 30 ETCS credits). The Master’s thesis is divided into a literature part covering scientific literature on the subject, and experimental part, which presents the results and conclusions of the experimental project. Experimental work can vary greatly depending on the subject. In the Master’s thesis you will develop skills to gather information, assess and apply information, and present information together with developing scientific thinking. Each student has an appointed supervisor for the thesis work. Often the Master’s thesis work is part of a larger research topic and the majority of the thesis work is done within research groups in the department. In addition, a significant part of the theses is made in collaboration with companies or national research institutes, which supports career prospects of the graduates to private and public sectors.