A link to the university

The Linkki centre opened at the Helsinki University Department of Computer Science last Friday. The centre offers all kinds of fun activities like games programming, and an online programming course open to all upper-secondary students, starting at the beginning of next year.

 

 

 

 

At the centre's opening, Arto Vihavainen, Linkki coordinator, demonstrated computer games made during the games programming summer camp. Photo: Sakari Tolppanen.

What exactly is computer science? What this discipline actually entails is often unclear even to new undergraduates at the Helsinki University Faculty of Science. However, many of them find themselves in this field of work in the end.

 
To spread information, we have now started the Linkki centre, which offers good, fun opportunities to acquaint yourself with the world of computer science. Linkki is a physical science classroom in the Exactum building on the Kumpula campus, but it is also where people are and where it is needed, says Jaakko Kurhila, director of the Linkki resource centre.
 
Linkki was officially opened last Friday, but it has already organised a games-programming summer camp for children and teenagers last summer. This autumn’s games-programming club is in full swing. ‘We only have to give young people opportunities, and after that there are no bounds,’ Arto Vihavainen says of Linkki.
Visitors at the Linkki opening could try out games that were programmed during the summer camp. Game programming is a nice introduction to computer science, but it can also become your profession. According to some calculations, the computer-game industry is already larger than the film industry.
 
‘The future and work opportunities are ours,’ Esko Ukkonen, the head of the Department of Computer Science said at the opening of Linkki. He was referring to all kinds of software engineering in addition to the game industry.

 


Linkki has been decorated with familiar characters from Angry Birds and SuperMario.Director Jaakko Kurhila in the right-hand photo. Photos: Sakari Tolppanen.

It is not the first time the University of Helsinki has given gifted upper-secondary students the opportunity to take computer science courses while they are still at school. Next spring, anyone can take the courses.

This is a whole new kind of online course, MOOC (massive open online course), which is equivalent with the nine-credit university courses Introduction to programming and Advanced programming.

MOOC hooks its participants and steers them forward, you can have the course credits recognized at the university, or they can be incorporated in your upper-secondary degree. In addition, anyone who completes the course with distinction may be accepted to the Department of Computer Science purely based on this course.

Linkki is one of seven resource centres in the national LUMA centre and its website is at: linkki.cs.helsinki.fi. Signing up for the MOOC course starts on 10 January 2012.

 

Article: Elisa Lautala

Translator: Marina Kurtén

 

 

Created date

18.10.2011 - 10:55

Not just the local hero

For the Department of Computer Science, the well-being of international staff has a long history. Everyday communication in English is an essential part of this.

“It makes no sense to be just the local hero. If we want to develop further, we’ll need to follow international research standards” emphasises Juergen Muench. The German Professor has been leading the Software Systems Engineering research group at Helsinki University’s Department of Computer Science since 2011.

Linus Torvalds inspiring department students


Linus Torvalds – alumnus of the department, doctor honoris causa of the University of Helsinki, the best known representative of Finnish computer science internationally – visited the Kumpula campus on 23 October. He answered the questions of students and staff during an informal Q&A session attended by some 300 guests. As the floor was open, and Torvalds emphasized that all questions were welcomed, the queries ranged from extreme to extreme

Exactum rooftop greenhouse experiment grows herbs

A greenhouse has been built on the roof of Exactum in a collaboration by the Department of Computer Science and the Fifth Dimension science project. To begin with, sedum grass is growing on the roof and tomatoes, courgettes and chilli in the greenhouse. The greenhouse is 9.4 square metres large.

The motivation for the computer scientists is the estimation that 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans are emitted by equipment using information technology. This is more than e.g. air traffic produces globally. To the scientists, this is reason enough to look into how to decrease the impact of information technology on global warming.

Study, teach and do what is fun

New postgraduates have recently been selected for the HeCSE graduate school that the department shares with Aalto University. One of the rising young researchers is Antti Laaksonen.

 

Antti finished his Master’s degree in spring 2011. Those whose job description includes reading lightweight Scrum theses written for the industry may be heartened by the fact that this student wrote his thesis on a most essential area of computer science, i.e. minimization of regular expressions. Antti chose his topic himself, because it was ‘interesting and suitably challenging.’