The Kari Sajavaara foundation (Kari Sajavaaran rahasto) has awarded our current Finnish lecturer Ilmari Ivaska a prize for a laudable PhD. dissertation in the field of applied linguistics. In his 2015 dissertation ”Edistyneen oppijansuomen konstruktiopiirteitä korpusvetoisesti: avainrakenneanalyysi” (’A Corpus-Driven Approach towards Constructional Features of Advanced Learner Finnish: Key Structure Analysis’), Ivaska studies linguistic use of automatic data mining methodologies and their applications to teaching and study of Finnish as a second language. According to the award committee, the dissertation shows a commendable coverage of the study of second language acquisition. Ivaska introduces a new method for studying language learning, and the results identify learning phenomena that have so far been unrevealed. Ivaska shows that the process of language learning is profoundly genre- and context-dependent, and goes on to argue that all language learning and teaching should take into account the situated nature of language use. Congratulations Ilmari!