Kaasalainen received an MSc in theoretical physics at theUniversity of Helsinki in 1990, moving shortly afterwards toMerton College, Oxford where he completed his DPhil in theoretical physics in 1994, supervised byJames Binney. After a series of post-doctoral and senior positions in Europe, he moved to the University of Helsinki and to his present institute in 2009. He led a research group in the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Inverse Problems Research.
Kaasalainen's research interests mostly focused on mathematical modelling in various fields ranging fromremote sensing and space research to planetary and galactic dynamics. Typically, the models and mathematical methods Kaasalainen developed with his colleagues are connected with inverse problems. Two such topics featured prominently in Kaasalainen's research:
Analysis of large dynamical systems, wheretorus construction methods[19][20] in phase space allow a compact representation or approximation of the dynamics of the observed system (such as agalaxy).
^M. Kaasalainen et al. (2001): Optimization methods for asteroid lightcurve inversion. II. The complete inverse problem. Icarus 153, 37.
^M. Kaasalainen et al. (1992): Interpretation of lightcurves of atmosphereless bodies. I. General theory and new inversion schemes. Astronomy and Astrophysics 259, 318.
^M. Kaasalainen and L. Lamberg (2006): Inverse problems of generalized projection operators. Inverse Problems 22, 749.
^L. Lamberg and M. Kaasalainen (2001): Numerical solution of the Minkowski problem. J. Comput. Appl. Math. 137, 213.
