Since May 2024 I have been the President of the Finnish Astronomical Society (FAS) and before that its Vice-President for a year.  FAS is in charge of addressing the needs of professional astronomers in Finland, including organizing national astronomy conferences (e.g., Astronomers' Days 2024), and applying for grants to pay for Finland's Astronomy & Astrophysics journal fee and European Astronomical Society membership fee. As the FAS President and VP, I have been writing these grant applications for the past three years, all of which have been successful. 

With just one year at the helm, I turned the idea of a joint Finnish-Swedish meeting into the Nordic-Baltic Astronomy Days 2026 conference, which marked the largest gathering of Nordic and Baltic astronomy researchers since 1990 and was a resounding success.

I instigated this conference and chaired both of its Scientific and Local Organizing Committees. It was held in Turku in May 2026, bringing more than 210 participants from all Nordic-Baltic countries. It featured 135 contributed talks and 33 poster presentations, mostly by early-career researchers. It was complemented by 17 highlight talks from major organizations like ESA, ESO, CTAO, SKAO, IceCube, and KM3NeT as well as several Nordic and Baltic research institutes like Finland's FINCA, Denmark's IDA, Norway's ITA, and Latvia's FOTONIKA. An overview of the program is found here.

The conference was received overwhelmingly positively and rekindled the flame of having regular regional conferences among Nordic-Baltic astronomers after a 36-year gap. A recap of the conference is available here.

The conference was also highly affordable, especially for junior researchers. This enabled the rare opportunity for even those without any travel funds to participate in a high caliber international conference. To make it affordable, I secured ~24k EUR in funding from national and international organizations to partially support the venue and travel costs.

As the Vice-President and later President of the Finnish Astronomical Society (FAS), I promoted the organization of public outreach lectures as part of all conferences organized by FAS. 

To kick this off, I initiated and led the organization of a public outreach lecture on black holes in Vaasa during the Astronomers' Days 2024 conference. To increase its impact, I partnered with Vaasa's Kvarken Space Center and the University of Vaasa.

Two years later, I initiated and led the organization of another public outreach lecture on asteroids in Turku during the Nordic-Baltic Astronomy Days 2026 conference. I partnered with the Turku City Library and Finland's widely popular Ursa Astronomical Association to live-stream the lecture. Several tens of people attended in person and several tens more watched online. A recording of the lecture is now available on YouTube here.

I have taken measures to ensure that FAS will continue to organize such outreach lectures even after I retire as FAS President.