From competition to collaboration

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Katherine Icay, Honours Bachelor of actuarial science at the University of Toronto, decided to make a career turn after a few years in an insurance company. Although fascinated by the theoretical foundations of her study field, she ultimately found the business environment unsuitable for her character.

After making the decision to return to school, friends in Helsinki suggested she check out the offerings of the local universities. Katherine browsed through the catalog of Master’s Degree Programmes, and the one in bioinformatics (MBI) captured her interest immediately. Now she is here in Helsinki, with a smile on her face: “The atmosphere is so open”, she says. After experiencing hard competition with her peers to get good grades in her previous studies, she now finds it liberating to be able to share ideas and solve exercises together with other students. She enjoys the fact that she can finally study biology and looks forward to applying her background knowledge to important life science questions.

About choosing Helsinki and MBI, she says: “The hardest part was leaving my mom behind”. Katherine had looked for similar programs inside Canada, but could not find any that suited both her interests and degree background as well as the MBI program did.

Freedom to select the courses to complement her previous studies is very important to her. “There are no course fees, so you can sample more.”, says Katherine. She then explains that she utilizes the opportunity to sample many courses during the first weeks before deciding which ones to follow. She admits that scheduling is a little bit hard as course descriptions are often missing. “I used to have the schedule ready for the whole year before September and once registered, it was unchangable. Now I go into the first week of classes not knowing what my timetable will look like the next week!”, she says.

When asked for advice for new students entering the Programme, she has the words ready: “Come early, find a house, and enjoy Finland!” She was lucky to have friends to help her settle into Helsinki, but she has heard of many who have had difficulties in obtaining student housing. Except for housing, she says that the overall orientation organized by the university is better than what she has experienced elsewhere.
On the way home after the interview, Katherine comes up with one more important tip: “Karelian pie! A must for new incoming international students.”, she emails back.

 

Text: Veli Mäkinen and Abhishek Tripathi
Photo: Esa Pitkänen
Language revision: Marina Kurtén

Created date

05.02.2010 - 12:26

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.