Born in 1983 in Helsinki, Finland, Toma Susi received his award-winning doctorate in nanomaterials from Aalto University in 2011. In 2013, he moved to Austria on an Austrian Science Fund fellowship, and in 2017 received the ERC Starting Grant to create a new way to manipulate materials at the atomic level. After a fast Tenure Track at the University of Vienna, in March 2021 he was appointed Associate Professor at its historic Faculty of Physics. He has worked on materials synthesis, spectroscopy, electron microscopy and modeling, authoring over 80 peer-reviewed articles and reviews.

Toma Susi coordinated open science policy at the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) in 2018-2020, chaired an open science task force at the Initiative for Science in Europe in 2020-2022, was a member of the core drafting group for the European agreement on reforming research assessment, and was elected onto the first Steering Board of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) in 2022. Toma serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Open Research Europe (ORE) and on the board of directors of the Association of ERC Grantees (AERG).