Päivi Nevalainen

Päivi Nevalainen serves as Supervisor in the Doctoral Programme Brain & Mind at the University of Helsinki's Faculty of Medicine. She holds a docentship in Physiology, Genetics and Preanalytics at Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) and conducts research at the BioMag Laboratory within the Department of Neurosciences, specializing in clinical neurophysiological applications for neonatal and pediatric populations.

Her research centers on advanced neurophysiological monitoring techniques, particularly EEG and magnetoencephalography (MEG), for neonatal brain assessment. Key focus areas include developing automated EEG analysis tools (e.g., Brain State of the Newborn, Sleep State Trend) to predict outcomes in perinatal asphyxia and neonatal encephalopathy, investigating epilepsy biomarkers through high-frequency oscillation analysis, and optimizing epilepsy surgery using stereo-EEG. Her work integrates transcranial magnetic stimulation to study motor cortex function in children and adolescents, with strong emphasis on translating neurophysiological markers into clinical decision support systems.

Analysis of her 60+ publications (2023-2025) reveals a consistent trajectory toward multimodal neurophysiological monitoring for precision neonatal care. Her recent work demonstrates increasing multicenter collaboration in epilepsy surgery research, with significant contributions to seizure onset zone localization methods and quantitative EEG-based outcome prediction in hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. The publications show methodological evolution from basic neurophysiological characterization toward clinically implementable algorithms.

Dr. Nevalainen actively supervises doctoral candidates through the Brain & Mind programme and contributes to clinical neurophysiology standardization at BioMag Laboratory. Her research program involves close collaboration with Helsinki University Hospital's neonatal intensive care and epilepsy surgery units, though specific grant details are not publicly documented. She maintains leadership in developing biomagnetic measurement protocols for neonatal applications within the BioMag team.