Professor Maxime Crochemore conferred Doctor Honoris Causa

Professor Maxime Crochemore received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Helsinki in a conferment ceremony of the Faculty of Philosophy in 23 May 2014.

Professor Maxime Crochemore conferred Doctor Honoris Causa

Professor Maxime Crochemore received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Helsinki in a conferment ceremony of the Faculty of Philosophy in 23 May 2014. Professor Crochemore is one of the founders and leading figures of the international research area of string algorithmics. His research interests include pattern matching, text indexing, coding, and text compression. He also works on the combinatorial background of these subjects and on their applications to bioinformatics. He has published more than 200 original research articles and has written several influential scientific monographs in the area. He is also the initiator of the annual symposium Combinatorial Pattern Matching.

Maxime Crochemore received his PhD in 1978 and Doctorat d'état (DSc) in 1983, Université de Rouen. His first professorship was at Université Paris-Nord in 1985 where acted as the President of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He became professor at Université Paris 7 in 1989 and was involved in the creation of Université Paris Est (Marne-la-Vallée). He was professor at Université Paris Est for 16 years and research laboratory director for 12 years. Then followed a position as Deputy Scientific Director of the Information and Communication Department of CNRS, 2004-2006. From 2007 he is Professor of Computer Science at King's College London.

The string algorithmics group of the Department of Computer Science has a long-standing contact with professor Crochemore that dates back to the 1980's. On the occasion of the conferment, the Department organized a special seminar in 22 May, talks given by Juha Kärkkäinen, Simon Puglisi, Dominik Kempa, Emanuele Giaquinta, Daniel Valenzuela, Jouni Siren, Travis Gagie, Djamal Belazzougui, Fabio Cunial, Leena Salmela, Jarkko Toivonen, Teppo Ahonen, and Antti Laaksonen.

Picture: Professor Maxime Crochemore together with the string algorithmics researchers at the UH.

Created date

02.06.2014 - 16:41

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.