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.

 

n addition to Timonen, Finland was represented at the Intel ISEF competition by Maisa Virtanen and Kaisla Kääriäinen from the Päivölä Institute, who had developed an urban ecological teaching game, and by two 9th graders from Helsinki, Emma Järvi and Ella Forsman, who had studied pre-treating stains with different detergents.
 
Bonus prize – a star named after you
 
Timonen also received a bonus prize worth more than money can measure. Along with all the first- and second-prize winners, he will have an asteroid discovered by the LINEAR programme (Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) named after him. Asteroids that might collide with earth and cause damage will not be named after the young winners.
 
Succeeding internationally via national competition
 
Timonen entered his work in the Finnish Tutki-Kokeile-Kehitä competition in spring 2015 and won the category for high school students. Based on that, he was selected to represent Finland in the EU Young Scientists in Milan. There he was awarded the Intel ISEF special prize, which was the trip to the science fair in Arizona.
 
The Tutki-Kokeile-Kehitä competition is organised by Development Centre Opinkirjo and Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland TEK. The number of participants has been growing steadily during the past years. The annual Intel ISEF event is the largest international science and technology competition for upper-secondary students. The six-day fair attracted over 1700 young scientists from 77 different countries. The projects of the finalists were assessed on-site by around one thousand judges representing different fields of science.

Created date

17.05.2016 - 15:35

Tsinghua Workshop - Strengthen Collaboration with Top Universities in China

 

Together with research teams in Tsinghua University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Professor Sasu Tarkoma, Prof. Yong Li, and Prof. Pan Hui organized a successful workshop on mobile big data and networking (url:http://fi.ee.tsinghua.edu.cn/2015workshop/) in September 2015.

 

 

Computational modelling sheds new light on core cell functions

An advanced computational model developed by computer scientists has revealed long delays in gene regulation.

 

The fields of genetics and genomics have developed rapidly during the past years, partly due to better computational methods. Now an international research group led by Finnish researchers has developed a new computational model, which has revealed unexpectedly long processing delays in gene expression following a regulatory signal.

Jiaheng Lu: our new Associate Professor

 

Jiaheng Lu (JL) has been nominated as a tenure-track Associate Professor in computer science for a period of five years starting on August 1, 2015. Recruiting foreign professors is an important tool in the internationalization efforts of the University, so a thorough introductory interview by the head of the Department (JP) was a must.

 

 

Petri Myllymäki to be director of HIIT

Petri Myllymäki, professor at the department, has been elected director of HIIT (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology), the joint research institute of the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, for the five-year period starting on 1 August, 2015. Petri will be following Professor Sami Kaski of Aalto University in this post. Since the post of director of HIIT is a fulltime job, Petri (PM) will be relieved of his own professorial duties for the same period, and so the head of the department (JP) saw fit to conduct an exit interview with him.