The university’s team Game of Nolife won Western European programming contest for students

In the finals in Thailand in spring 2016, the students from the University of Helsinki will face the best teams in the world.

The University of Helsinki has won the inter-university NWERC 2015 programming contest that was held in Linköping recently. It was attended by 95 teams from Western Europe. The Game of Nolife team from the University of Helsinki consisted of computer-science and maths students Tuukka Korhonen, Olli Hirviniemi and Otte Heinävaara.

-It feels great, especially since there were teams from strong universities like KTH in Stockholm, Oxford, and Cambridge, says Antti Laaksonen, the coach for the winning team.

The topic of the contest is the programming of algorithms, and the contestants have to solve a number of difficult programming problems. They are given five hours to solve them. Each team has one computer at their disposal for programming the algorithm.

The Game of Nolife team prepared for the November contest in Linköping with a training camp at the MIPT university in Moscow. The ten-day camp was organised right before the contest, and it helped the contestants especially with solving the geometric problems.

-The level of contest programming in Russia is very high, and the team had the opportunity to compete against some of the best Russian teams during the camp, Laaksonen says.

The finals will be held in Thailand in May 2016. The teams in the finals have won regionals around the world. The goal of Game of Nolife is to win a medal, which will require a lot of training during the spring.

Main page of the contest: http://www.nwerc.eu/

Results: http://www.nwerc.eu/scoreboard/

Image: The Game of Nolife team, left to right Otte Heinävaara, Tuukka Korhonen, and Olli Hirviniemi.

 

Image: Pauliina Pajunen

Text: Minna Meriläinen-Tenhu

Translation: Marina Kurtén

Created date

03.12.2015 - 15:49

Inter-university research and training centre on information security

The University of Helsinki and Aalto University have set up a joint research centre focusing on information security. The new centre, HAIC (Helsinki-Aalto Centre for Information Security), will coordinate the Master’s-level security education between the university and Aalto, with links to research and doctoral education.

The idea is to build bridges to the industries and gain their support for the education, and e.g. grants for MSc students coming from outside the EU, the head of the Department of Computer Science, Sasu Tarkoma, says.

Computer science undergraduate Petteri Timonen awarded in US science competition

Petteri Timonen, 19, came second in his category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix, Arizona.

 

On Friday, 15 May, Timonen, who is studying computer science at the University of Helsinki, was awarded a grant worth 1500 USD, some 1330 euros, in the Systems Software category of the Intel ISEF science competition.
 
As his entry, Timonen submitted a software tool he developed for Finland’s Red Cross to make mobile blood runs around the country as cost-effective as possible. Timonen implemented his tool in cooperation with the Blood Service.

The tool has gained international attention, as no tool like it seems to have been developed anywhere else. Timonen has also negotiated with the American Red Cross by email.

Renewed Carat App Gives a Smart Boost to Battery

 
The Carat Project Team at the University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, has published a new version of the popular mobile energy-awareness application.

After launch in June 2012, Carat has helped over 850,000 users, of which 41 per cent have been Android and 59 per cent iOS users, respectively. The new user interface follows modern application design guidelines and presents battery information in a more intuitive and easy to use manner.

- In addition to the new user interface, we have increased the accuracy of the energy saving recommendations of Carat, says Professor Sasu Tarkoma, the leader of this research done at the university.

The user interface features the number of energy intensive applications (Hogs), energy anomalies (Bugs) and user recommendations (Actions) at a glance on the main screen as well as global energy statistics for the device community.

Cover Song Identification Using Compression-based Distance Measures

M.Sc. Teppo E. Ahonen will defend his doctoral thesis Cover Song Identification Using Compression-based Distance Measures on Friday the 1st of April 2016 at 12 o'clock in the University of Helsinki Exactum Building, Auditorium CK112 (Gustaf Hällströminkatu 2b).  His opponent is Academy Professor Petri Toiviainen (University of Jyväskylä) and custos Professor Esko Ukkonen (University of Helsinki). The defence will be held in Finnish.

Measuring similarity in music data is a problem with various potential applications. In recent years, the task known as cover song identification has gained widespread attention. In cover song identification, the purpose is to determine whether a piece of music is a different rendition of a previous version of the composition. The task is quite trivial for a human listener, but highly challenging for a computer.