Olena Myronycheva
was born on June 7th, 1975. After completing her primary education, she pursued studies at the Melitopol Institute of Mechanisation of Agriculture (Ukraine), Faculty of Agricultural Mechanisation, graduating with a civil engineering degree in 1999 and a candidate of agricultural science (equivalent of PhD degree) in 2003. Since then, she worked at the Department of Agrotechnology as an Associate Professor until 2015. In 2015, she was awarded the Swedish Institute Visby Visiting Scholarship and came to Sweden, where she decided to do her second PhD degree in wood material science and engineering at the Division of Wood Science and Engineering, Department of Engineering and Mathematics of the Lulea University of Technology, Campus Skelleftea, Sweden. The topic of the PhD thesis was “Effectiveness and Evaluation of Wood Protection against Biological Deterioration Caused by Filamentous Fungi,” and the degree was awarded on December 17, 2021.
Her academic journey was marked by dedication and passion for researching fungal colonization, growth process evaluation, and the development of non-destructive assessment methods. Her research about the complexity of environmental degradation processes affecting bio-based material by microbial species of different taxonomic groups has contributed to many national and international projects. Notably, the project about the inventory (https://www.kmmd.se/projekt/stavspan-i-strangnas-och-vasteras-stift) and preservation (https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/filer/556588/KM2020_44_V%c3%a4ster%c3%a5s%20stift.pdf) of historical Swedish churches was supported by the Swedish National Heritage Board, and here, the influence of the microenvironment on the degree of contamination and decay on wooden shingles treated with different preservation techniques was discovered. The evaluation of the historical material with computer tomography and near-infrared spectroscopy allows the modeling of quality properties of the historical wood that might help to use the material in the conservation of the historical buildings made of bio-based material. Another aspect of the characterization of the indoor environment is that in Sweden, the historical churches are places of work and visit, and improper indoor air quality due to contamination by mould material can cause negative health effects.
In addition to academic interests, Dr. Olena Myronycheva is involved in industry-related projects via Wood Center North, a sawmill industrial cluster where methods and practices of bio-based material quality assessment found direct implementation in industrial quality control that are also supported by professional associations such as Swedish Wood and The Swedish Federation of Wood and Furniture Industry that are trade and employer organization for the entire wood processing industry. The multidisciplinary project of wood in the hospital environment was one of the implementations developed by Dr. Olena Myronycheva’s methods of the microbial contamination assessment that derived from historical environment investigation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XqulVdOooI).
Moreover, being originally from Ukraine, Dr. Olena Myronycheva got funding to support PhD students and young researchers in her home country, where implementing European education’s culture and standards helps develop international expertise for Ukrainian project participants.
Besides her academic and professional activities, Olena is involved in community service as a volunteer to help replaced by war people in their needs, which was recognized by Region Vasterbotten in 2023 as being admitted as an “Everyday Hero.”