Eemil Lagerspetz was awarded a grant by the Jorma Ollila fund of Nokia Foundation on November 24, 2015

 

 
 
Eemil Lagerspetz was awarded a grant by the Jorma Ollila fund of Nokia Foundation on November 24, 2015. Congratulations!
 
The fund was launched in year 2014 to support post doctoral research career development. 
The title of Eemil’s post doctoral research is “Mind The Gap: Combining Trajectory Datasets for a Holistic Picture of Human Mobility” and the research will be carried out at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2016.
 
 
Abstract: 
Human mobility in an urban environment is an important topic in both academia and the transport industry, as well as a core
interest in city planning, commercial center placement, and traffic control. Recent work has shown that the aggregate urban
mobility pattern follows the Lévy walk. In particular, urban mobility consists of a mix of multiple modes of transport,
incorporating many short legs or flights, often corresponding to walking, and few long flights, typically vehicular transport.
There are many human mobility datasets available, for example NYC Open Data, and Chicago as well as Beijing City
Lab. These contain movement data of people, smartphones, vehicles, or other identifiable objects.
These datasets can be fine-grained or very coarse, ranging from accurate vehicular GPS data to point surveys filled by
travel agency customers. They also always contain holes, or gaps, where data is missing for one reason or another, for example because the device in question was turned off, there were no traffic cameras that detect license plates on a particular leg of the journey, the smartphone was unable to obtain a cellular signal, or the customer neglected to fill the survey. To mitigate the gaps and obtain a holistic picture of human mobility, this work aims to develop algorithms for filling the gaps based on learned models and external data. 

 

 

Created date

25.11.2015 - 14:22

Cold Aisle Containment in our server room

On Thursday 10 March 2011, we installed a so-called Cold Aisle Containment in the server room shared by the Department of Computer Science and HIIT. This is a rustic contraption made from transparent PE plastic, air-conditioning tubes, and a great deal of duct tape. It cuts back on the need to cool the server room very efficiently, as the air-tight plastic stops the intake and exhaust air from the servers from mixing.

HIIT study: Servers run well around zero degrees

Lots of energy can be saved by using outside air directly for cooling in data centers in the north. In a study by researchers of Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT and the University of Helsinki, computers functioned correctly over extended periods of time when run in harsh winter temperatures. Commercial, off-the-shelf computers ran well even when the outside temperature was -22C (-8F).

Master's degree studies in computer science popular among international applicants

Master's degree programmes in computer science at the University of Helsinki were very popular among international applicants in spring 2010. This academic year the department of computer science at the University of Helsinki decided to offer two of its Master's degree sub-programmes, namely the programme on Algorithms and Machine Learning and the programme on Networking and Services, completely in English from the beginning of Autumn term 2010.

Esko Ukkonen’s birthday coffee

The head of the department, Esko Ukkonen, celebrated his 60th birthday. The celebration was held in Exactum at the end of January. The party was attended by employees of the Department of Computer Science and invited guests. The programme included both congratulatory speeches and songs, with a quartet from Wiipurilaisen Osakunnan Laulajat (the Viipuri students’ association singers) singing a song for a former active member. Esko was inspector in Kymenlaakson Osakunta (the Kymenlaakso students’ association) for over ten years.