Kaasalainen mostly worked on inverse problems and their applications especially in astrophysics, as well as on dynamical systems.
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.
Kaasalainen was awarded the first Pertti Lindfors prize of the Finnish Inverse Problems Society in 2001.
[2] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 7 January 2004 (M.P.C.
Typically, the models and mathematical methods Kaasalainen developed with his colleagues are connected with inverse problems.