2024-09-11 Dr Juha Hintsa

Juha at his summer house in Porvoo with the grandchild of his partner Nina

It is with the deepest sadness that we announce the death of Dr. Juha Hintsa on Friday 06 September 2024 in Engelberg, Switzerland. His sudden passing has stunned all of the CBRA community and has left an enormous hole in so many people’s lives. Juha leaves behind his mother, Inna Hintsa, and his partner, Nina Liuko. Having first met in secondary school, Juha and Nina had been together for nine years. Our thoughts and prayers are very much with them and all his family at this difficult time.

Born on 23 September 1967 in Turku, Finland, Juha attended the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) between 1988-1994. After graduating, he started working as a development engineer at Rautaruukki in Finland. Being very interested in gaining insights into the processes and issues arising in relation to the movement of goods across borders, he saw research as a way to contribute to progress in these topics and to support safety and security in world trade. Therefore, Juha then went to Switzerland and attended the renowned HEC Lausanne – The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne between 2003 and 2011, during which time he wrote his doctoral thesis, entitled Post-2001 supply chain security & its impacts on the private sector and founded CBRA.

Juha was a larger than life character, who founded the Cross-border Research Association (CBRA) in 2005 as a spin-off research institute from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was researching his doctoral thesis. CBRA’s research activities have always focussed on supply chain and transportation security; customs and border management security; and global trade facilitation.

Juha made an immediate impact on everyone he met and that had the pleasure of working with him – both within CBRA but also in the over 40 European research projects he has been involved with over the years. To date CBRA has published nearly 100 articles, reports and posters since 2005, but the work does not end here. With CBRA actively participating in four current projects and with a new project starting in December 2024, his legacy will continue just as he would have wanted.

At the centre of so many innovations in the Customs arena for almost 20 years, once you had met Juha, you would not forget him. His positive and upbeat personality shone through. With an enormous capacity for knowledge and innovation, he was always willing to look at new initiatives or ways of approaching a challenge, if it could help make CBRA an even bigger success. He was an inspiration to us all and will be sorely missed.

CBRA is currently active in the PEN-CP, CONNECTOR, PARSEC and MELCHIOR projects. PEN-CP was the brainchild of Juha and he has brought together an active community of 13 European customs organisations and 100 end users and experts since its inception in September 2018. PEN-CP-CP also engages leading institutions and experts from TU Delft (the Netherlands), University of Lausanne (Switzerland), ARTTIC (France). Although the project is set to conclude in January 2025, the team are actively working on a proposal for the European Commission to continue its valuable and highly thought of work and research.

As a next step to advancing cross-border research further, Juha and research partner Frank Janssens together founded ‘CBRA Services’, based in Belgium, in 2021 where they, joined by Valentina Scioneri, prepared and worked on two new EU Horizon research projects, the active PARSEC project, which will deliver an ambitious set of solutions to fight the abuse of postal and express courier flows for criminal and terrorist purposes and the BORDERLINK project which will enhance customs’ capabilities and performance at EU borders by advancing the detection and identification of threat materials, improving training, communication and data sharing. It will help to strengthen supply chain controls and promote the Green Customs Initiative.

Frank describes Juha not only as an incredibly active and hard-working researcher and project manager but also as a leading authority with brilliant ideas on cross-border research and a fine person where honesty, helping and caring for others were much appreciated qualities.

Outside of work, Juha enjoyed hiking and skiing in his beloved mountains and playing tennis. He chose the place he wanted to live carefully, eventually settling down in the resort town of Engelberg, Switzerland surrounded by beautiful mountains, the highlight of which is the 3,020 metre high Titlis. Tragic and shocking though the news is, it is perhaps fitting that he passed away doing what he loved – hiking in the mountains – and there is no doubt this would have made him smile.

He will be missed greatly by his family, friends, work colleagues and many, many associates.

Rest in peace, Juha.