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.

Esko Ukkonen’s career at the Department of Computer Science began in 1972. The first year, he worked as a part-time teacher, and the following year he was already part of the research community. He took his Master’s degree in mathematics in ‘73. The same year he transferred to computer science and became a PhD student for Martti Tienari, the founder of the Department of Computer Science. After defending his thesis it took only a couple of years before he was conferred his first assistant professorship in 1981.

During his long academic career, Esko has also worked internationally: at Berkeley in the United States and at Freidburg in Germany. Professor Ukkonen was elected head of the department for the next four-year period starting in 2010.

At his own request, the money collected for his present was given to the Red Cross. Esko wants to thank you all for contributing to a good cause!

A really welcome present was the volume in honour of him made by his former students. The volume consists of some twenty research articles written by Professor Ukkonen’s former students and collaboration partners.

Once more, congratulations to Esko!

Created date

25.02.2010 - 01:00

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.