Computer Science at the University of Helsinki 1994

4. International relations

Student exchange

The Department of Computer Science accepts annually some five new foreign students to start their undergraduate studies. These students are either beginning their computer science studies or complementing their studies. The department offers only occasionally courses lectured in English and thus a good knowledge of Finnish is needed for the successful completion of undergraduate studies.

Each year usually a few Finnish students from the department complement their studies at other European universities. The Department of Computer Science is involved in the ERASMUS Inter-University Coordination Program, financed by the Commission of the European Communities. Through this program it is possible for students of the department to study at the Technical University of Darmstadt. The department also accepts visiting students from the Technical University of Darmstadt. Exchange of students within the Nordic countries is also easy with the financial support of NORDPLUS, a program coordinated by the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Post-graduate studies at the Department of Computer Science can usually be accomplished in English. The department may admit foreign post-graduate students who have completed their Bachelor or Master of Science degree to work on any research areas connected with ongoing projects. The Academy of Finland and the Ministry of Education and Science offer grants for foreign post-graduate students within the international exchange programs.

Research cooperation

The department has active contacts with many European and American Computer Science Departments. Faculty members have joint research efforts with individual researchers from abroad. The results of this international cooperation are partly presented in the publication list. Many faculty members have spent long periods of time abroad as visiting researchers or guest professors. In turn, apart from more than 20 short term visitors every year, the department has hosted several visiting foreign scholars. A listing of long term visitors in 1991-93 is given below.

The department has actively taken part in the European research cooperation. COST 14 Programme "CSCW: Computer Supported Cooperation Work" has faculty members in the working groups "WG: Collaborative Information Spaces" (Hannu Erkiö, 1990-) and "WG7: Communication and Distributed System Support for CSCW" (Henry Tirri, 1990-). The department will be participating in COST 247 project Formal methods in Communication Protocol Design. The department also participates in the ESPRIT Programme in several projects. The largest of these are an industrial project "VITAL - A methodology based workbench for KBS Life Cycle Support (ESPRIT II P5365)" (Heikki Mannila, 1991-1995) and "TransCoop - Transaction Management Support for Cooperative Applications (ESPRIT III P8012)" (Henry Tirri, 1994-1997). In addition the department participates in cooperative research activities as a member institution in the working group "NEUROCOLT -Neural and Computational Learning (ESPRIT III P8556)" (Esko Ukkonen 1994-1996) and in a network of excellence "NEURONET - Network of excellence in Neural Networks (ESPRIT III P8961)" (Henry Tirri, 1994-1996).

Faculty members abroad in 1991-93

Patrik Floréen, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands August 1993 - January 1994
Gösta Grahne, University of Toronto, Canada August 1989 - July 1992
Matti Hiltunen, University of Arizona, Tucson, U.S.A. from August 1990 Roope Kaivola, University of Edinburgh, Great Britain from October 1992
Teemu Kerola, IBM, Austin, Texas, U.S.A. August 1990 - August 1991
Pekka Kilpeläinen, University of Waterloo, Canada from August 1993
Jyrki Kivinen, University of California at Santa Cruz, U.S.A. from August 1993
Heikki Lokki, University of Missouri, St. Louis, and Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. from July 1993
Heikki Mannila, Technische Universität Wien, Austria March - June 1993
Otto Nurmi, Universität Freiburg, Germany October 1992 - February 1993
Pekka Orponen, Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, The Netherlands May - June 1993
Jorma Tarhio, University of California at Berkeley, U.S.A. from August 1993
Henry Tirri, Purdue University, U.S.A. July 1990 - July 1992
Esko Ukkonen, Universität Freiburg, Germany August 1990 - July 1991

Foreign visitors in 1991-93

M.Sc. Andrejs Auzins, University of Riga, Latvia October 1990 - June 1991 M.Sc. Bruce Barker, U.S.A. January - July 1993
Magistère Patrice Calegari, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France June - August 1993
Dr. Thomas Eiter, Technische Universität Wien, March - June 1991
Magistère Anne Fouilloux, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France June - September 1992
M.Sc. Jürgen Eckerle, July 1993
M.Sc. Quan Gu, Suzhou University, China January - December 1991
Dr.rer.nat. Alois Heinz, Universität Freiburg, Germany August - October 1993
Dr. Shmuel Katz, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel September - December 1992
B.Sc. David Nespoli, U.S.A. August - December 1993
M.Sc. Cheng Qi, China from October 1993
Serge Santos, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Switzerland from November 1993
Pascal de Vink, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands January - March 1992
B.Sc. Curt Taylor, U.S.A. August 1990 - December 1992

Other activities

Faculty members regularly serve as referees for international computer science journals and conferences. Many faculty members have also reviewers for various review publications, such as Computing Reviews and Mathematical Reviews. Prof. Martti Tienari has been a member of the editorial board of the scientific journal BIT from 1972 to 1993. Prof. Esko Ukkonen is the editor-in-chief of the Nordic Journal of Computing. Associate prof. Matti Mäkelä is an international coordinator of ACM SIGNUM Newsletter.

The department organized the Third Scandinavian Workshop on Algorithm Theory (SWAT'92), held on July 8-10, 1992, in Helsinki. The conference proceedings was edited by Otto Nurmi and Esko Ukkonen and it was published by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series.

Other professional activities of the faculty members during 1991-93 include the following:

Gösta Grahne

Member of the program committee, Second International Conference on Deductive and Object-Oriented Databases (DOOD '91), Munich, Germany, 1991

Member of the Ph.D. examination committee for Mary-Anne Williams, University of Sydney, Australia, 1994.

Member of the Program Committee, Sixth Conference of Artificial Intelligence Research in Finland (STeP-94), Turku, Finland, 1994.

Teemu Kerola

Member of the Program Committee, Seventh International Conference on Modelling Techniques and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation, Vienna, Austria, 1994.

Heikki Mannila

Member of the Program Committee, Third International Symposium on Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming, Passau, Germany, 1991.

Member of the Program Committee, Fourth International Symposium on Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming, Leuven, Belgium, 1992.

Member of the Program Committee, 18th International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB '92), Vancouver, Canada, 1992.

Official Opponent for the Ph.D. thesis of Viggo Kann, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, May 1992.

External Reviewer for TfR, (Sweden), 1992, 1993.

Otto Nurmi

Member of the Program Committee, Workshop on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS'93), Montreal, Canada, 1993.

Pekka Orponen

External reviewer for the position of Lecturer in Computer Science, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, September 1993.

Member of the Ph.D. examination committee for Jingsen Chen, Lund university, Sweden, June 1993.

Member of the Program Committee, 21st Internat. Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, Jerusalem, July 1994.

Martti Tienari

Activities in IFIP (International Federation of Information Processing): General Assembly since 1987 , IFIP Trustee since 1989 , Cognizant Officer of TC2(Software:Theory and Practice) and TC12(Artificial Intelligence), Member of Publication Committee, and Chairman of the Activity Management Board since 1992.

External reviewer of two professorships at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, 1992.

Member of Program Committee, PSTV'94 - The 14th International Symposium on Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification, Vancouver, Canada, June 1994.

Henry Tirri

Member of 1993 European Community Cost 14 Project: Computer Supported Cooperative Work, WG 7: Communication and Distributed System Support for CSCW.

Member of the Program Committee, IEEE First International Workshop on Interoperability in Multidatabase Systems (IMS-91), Kyoto, Japan,1991.

Member of the Program Committee, 18th International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB '92), Vancouver, Canada, 1992.

Member of the Program Committee, Research Issues in Data Engineering: Interoperability in Multidatabase Systems (RIDE-IMS '93), Vienna, Austria, 1993.

Member of the Program Committee, Applications of Databases (ADP-94), Vadstena, Sweden, 1994.

Member of the Program Committee, Second European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (EWCBR '94), Chambery, France, 1994.

Esko Ukkonen

Member of the Steering Committee of the Scandinavian Workshop on Algorithm Theory (SWAT).

Member of the Finnish-Estonian Joint Committee on Informatics.

External reviewer of professorships at Luleå University (1991 and 1994) and at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (1992).

External reviewer for NSF (Washington D.C., U.S.A.), 1991- , and for TFR (Sweden), 1993- .

Chairman of the Program and Organization Committees, Third Scandinavian Workshop on Algorithm Theory (SWAT'92), Helsinki, 1992.

Member of the Program Committee, Third Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM'92), Tucson, Arizona, 1992.

Member of the Program Committee, First European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA'93), Bad Honnef, Germany, 1993. Member of the Program Committee, Fourth International Workshop on Algorithmic Learning Theory (ALT'93), Tokyo, Japan, 1993.

Member of the Ph.D. examination Committee for Roberto Grossi, University of Pisa, Italy, 1993.

Member of the Program Committee, Fifth Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM'94). Asilomar, California, U.S.A., 1994.

Member of the Program Committee, Fourth Scandinavian Workshop on Algorithm Theory (SWAT'94). Denmark, 1994.

Member of the Program Committee, Fifth International Workshop on Algorithmic Learning Theory (ALT'94), Leipzig, Germany, 1994.