From competition to collaboration

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Katherine Icay, Honours Bachelor of actuarial science at the University of Toronto, decided to make a career turn after a few years in an insurance company. Although fascinated by the theoretical foundations of her study field, she ultimately found the business environment unsuitable for her character.

After making the decision to return to school, friends in Helsinki suggested she check out the offerings of the local universities. Katherine browsed through the catalog of Master’s Degree Programmes, and the one in bioinformatics (MBI) captured her interest immediately. Now she is here in Helsinki, with a smile on her face: “The atmosphere is so open”, she says. After experiencing hard competition with her peers to get good grades in her previous studies, she now finds it liberating to be able to share ideas and solve exercises together with other students. She enjoys the fact that she can finally study biology and looks forward to applying her background knowledge to important life science questions.

About choosing Helsinki and MBI, she says: “The hardest part was leaving my mom behind”. Katherine had looked for similar programs inside Canada, but could not find any that suited both her interests and degree background as well as the MBI program did.

Freedom to select the courses to complement her previous studies is very important to her. “There are no course fees, so you can sample more.”, says Katherine. She then explains that she utilizes the opportunity to sample many courses during the first weeks before deciding which ones to follow. She admits that scheduling is a little bit hard as course descriptions are often missing. “I used to have the schedule ready for the whole year before September and once registered, it was unchangable. Now I go into the first week of classes not knowing what my timetable will look like the next week!”, she says.

When asked for advice for new students entering the Programme, she has the words ready: “Come early, find a house, and enjoy Finland!” She was lucky to have friends to help her settle into Helsinki, but she has heard of many who have had difficulties in obtaining student housing. Except for housing, she says that the overall orientation organized by the university is better than what she has experienced elsewhere.
On the way home after the interview, Katherine comes up with one more important tip: “Karelian pie! A must for new incoming international students.”, she emails back.

 

Text: Veli Mäkinen and Abhishek Tripathi
Photo: Esa Pitkänen
Language revision: Marina Kurtén

Created date

05.02.2010 - 12:26

Brain poetry

In the latest research result of the month section, we interview PhD student Jukka Toivanen about his recent work on brain poetry in the Discovery group led by professor Hannu Toivonen. How can humans and machines be creative together?

Kjell Lemström to be new Head of Studies

Since Jaakko Kurhila left the department to head the Open University, we had to find a new university lecturer to act as head of studies in short order. We received a total of 28 applications. Out of these, and after a preliminary qualification round, evaluations, interviews, and a department council hearing, Kjell Lemström (KL) was elected for the post. He started working as the department's Head of Studies on 2 March 2015, so the Head of the department (JP) conducted the following induction interview that very week.

This is by no means the first time Kjell has been employed by the department. He defended his thesis on ‘String Matching Techniques for Music Retrieval’ in 2000, and has held numerous teaching and research positions both before and after that, until he transferred to the Laurea University of Applied Sciences in 2011 (luckily, that was only temporary).

Head of Studies Jaakko Kurhila to head Open University

The Head of Studies at the department, University Lecturer Jaakko Kurhila, has been elected to the post of director of the Open University at the University of Helsinki. It was a tough race: all in all, 39 applicants sought the post, some of them through the Mercuri Urval headhunting process. After a consultant evaluation, interviews, and aptitude assessments, the preparatory committee for the post, the steering committee for the Open University, and the rector of the university came to a unanimous decision to select Jaakko, and the contract is already being drawn up.

Being selected from this prestigious group of applicants, and after such a thorough process, is indisputable proof of the qualifications of Jaakko and the high esteem the academic community has for him. The department extends its warmest congratulations to Jaakko for this career development and is proud of the success of its protégé.

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Standardization

In the fourth research result of the month, we report a joint work between the UH NODES group and the Cambridge NetOS group, lead by Prof. Sasu Tarkoma and Prof. Jon Crowcroft, respectively. Their work recently received the best paper award "Best of CCR" from ACM SIGCOMM.