VTT carries out applied research and contract research across fields including bioeconomy and cellular agriculture, nuclear energy and fusion power, quantum technology and microelectronics, materials, digital technologies and sustainable energy. Roughly 70 per cent of its income comes from commissions and from research funding awarded in open competition, with the remainder provided by the state to fund its statutory research mission; the two streams are kept separate. In 2024 VTT published a record 598 scientific articles, 84 per cent of them openly accessible. Much of VTT's impact arises through licensing, contract research and the creation of spin-off companies.
Nuclear energy and safety
Nuclear research has been part of VTT's work since the mid-20th century. VTT operated Finland's first nuclear reactor, the FiR 1 TRIGA research reactor at Otaniemi, from 1962 until its shutdown in 2015, after which the reactor entered decommissioning.
In reactor physics, VTT developed the Serpent Monte Carlo reactor-physics and burnup code, begun in 2004 and publicly released in 2009. Serpent is used by more than 100 universities and research organisations in some 28 countries and now forms part of VTT's Kraken multi-physics modelling framework.
In nuclear materials and structural integrity, VTT researcher Kim Wallin developed the "Master Curve" methodology for assessing the brittle fracture toughness of ferritic steels. The method became the basis of the international test standard ASTM E1921 (1997) and is widely used to evaluate the integrity of reactor pressure vessels from small surveillance specimens. VTT's reactor-safety research also covers the behaviour of nuclear fuel under accident conditions, including the rupture of Zircaloy fuel cladding during a loss-of-coolant accident, and the use of machine learning to monitor the condition of safety-critical systems.
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VTT contributes to fusion research: it manufactures components for the ITER experimental fusion reactor, and in 2024 it became the first foreign partner to join an ARPA-E programme of the United States Department of Energy, working with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on materials for the commercial use of fusion energy.
VTT also designs advanced reactors. The LDR-50, a 50 MW small modular reactor for district heat using a passive safety system, has been developed at VTT since 2020. In May 2023 it was spun out into the company Steady Energy, which began building a full-scale, electrically heated (non-nuclear) pilot of the reactor at the decommissioned Salmisaari coal-fired plant in Helsinki, with first concrete poured in early 2026.
Bioeconomy and cellular agriculture
VTT is active in industrial biotechnology, food technology and cellular agriculture. In 2015 it reported developing hybrid brewing yeasts to create new lager flavours and speed up production, and Fazer has licensed a VTT oats technology.
A prominent line of work is precision fermentation to make animal-free food proteins. VTT research demonstrated the production of egg-white protein (ovalbumin) without chickens, which in October 2020 won the "Impact Expected" category at a European research-institute innovation competition in Brussels. This technology was commercialised by the 2022 VTT spin-off Onego Bio, which uses the fungus Trichoderma reesei to produce a bioidentical egg-white protein marketed as Bioalbumen; the company received a "no questions" determination on its GRAS status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025. Another spin-off, Solar Foods, produces a protein (Solein) using microbes and gases from the air.
Quantum technology and microelectronics
VTT works on superconducting quantum computing and operates shared cleanroom facilities for microelectronics. Together with the company IQM, and with €20.7 million of Finnish government funding, VTT built Finland's quantum computers in phases: a 5-qubit machine in 2021 (later linked to CSC's LUMI supercomputer), a 20-qubit machine in 2023, and in March 2025 Europe's first 50-qubit superconducting quantum computer, named VTT Q50, made available through the VTT QX service.
Under the European Chips Act, VTT participates in several European semiconductor pilot lines funded by the Chips Joint Undertaking — APECS, FAMES, NanoIC and PIXEurope — focusing on radio-frequency technologies for 6G, optical microsystems and chip packaging. In 2024–2025 it received €29 million for the APECS pilot line. VTT's pilot-line activities are based at Kvanttinova, a microelectronics and quantum-technology hub in Espoo developed by VTT, Aalto University and the City of Espoo with €79 million of Finnish government funding; the first semiconductor processes were expected to begin in late 2026.
Other research and innovations
In 2014, VTT developed a high-accuracy hyperspectral camera for early detection of skin cancer, commercialised by the health-technology company Revenio.
In 2016, VTT developed a mobile application and accessory to detect heart arrhythmias and help prevent strokes.
VTT has developed sustainable textile fibre technologies, including processes commercialised by the spin-offs Spinnova and Infinited Fibre Company, and the enzyme-based Biocelsol method developed with Tampere University of Technology.
In June 2026, Mitsubishi Electric and VTT announced that they had completed the core development of a direct ocean capture system that removes carbon dioxide from seawater.
