Roope Ritvos

Roope Ritvos is Director of new initiatives at Forum Virium Helsinki. Forum Virium Helsinki is the smart city unit of City of Helsinki, responsible for design, development and up-take of new innovations and technologies to improve the life of the citizens and solve the city’s challenges. It has been a global smart city pioneer for example in urban data, living labs and autonomous transport technologies with several European and global awards for its projects and outcomes, including HRI – Helsinki Region Infoshare, Smart Kalasatama living lab district aiming to deliver one more hour to the day for its residents, and SOHJOA, the world’s first demonstration of autonomous buses on open roads.

Ritvos has set up various initiatives experimenting and piloting new service innovations and IoT, robotics and data technologies in solving the City’s needs in mobility, healthcare, energy and construction. Project design and consequent funding strategies and funding acquisition is core part of this work. He has extensive innovation and research funding experience from national and European programmes, including Horizon2020, CIP, FP7, ERDF, Interreg, Tekes, and private funding.  Programmes and projects he has set up include, for example, Smart Kalasatama, CitySDK, FinEst Smart Twin City Helsinki-Tallinn, FABULOS – large scale pre-commercial procurement of robot buses, and Helsinki’s EU Smart City Lighthouse project.

Before Forum Virium Helsinki he has worked in game startups, Aalto University and Helsinki region triple-helix innovation agency Culminatum Innovation.

More information about Forum Virium Helsinki can be found at https://www.forumvirium.fi/