Professor Maxime Crochemore conferred Doctor Honoris Causa

Professor Maxime Crochemore received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Helsinki in a conferment ceremony of the Faculty of Philosophy in 23 May 2014.

Professor Maxime Crochemore conferred Doctor Honoris Causa

Professor Maxime Crochemore received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Helsinki in a conferment ceremony of the Faculty of Philosophy in 23 May 2014. Professor Crochemore is one of the founders and leading figures of the international research area of string algorithmics. His research interests include pattern matching, text indexing, coding, and text compression. He also works on the combinatorial background of these subjects and on their applications to bioinformatics. He has published more than 200 original research articles and has written several influential scientific monographs in the area. He is also the initiator of the annual symposium Combinatorial Pattern Matching.

Maxime Crochemore received his PhD in 1978 and Doctorat d'état (DSc) in 1983, Université de Rouen. His first professorship was at Université Paris-Nord in 1985 where acted as the President of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He became professor at Université Paris 7 in 1989 and was involved in the creation of Université Paris Est (Marne-la-Vallée). He was professor at Université Paris Est for 16 years and research laboratory director for 12 years. Then followed a position as Deputy Scientific Director of the Information and Communication Department of CNRS, 2004-2006. From 2007 he is Professor of Computer Science at King's College London.

The string algorithmics group of the Department of Computer Science has a long-standing contact with professor Crochemore that dates back to the 1980's. On the occasion of the conferment, the Department organized a special seminar in 22 May, talks given by Juha Kärkkäinen, Simon Puglisi, Dominik Kempa, Emanuele Giaquinta, Daniel Valenzuela, Jouni Siren, Travis Gagie, Djamal Belazzougui, Fabio Cunial, Leena Salmela, Jarkko Toivonen, Teppo Ahonen, and Antti Laaksonen.

Picture: Professor Maxime Crochemore together with the string algorithmics researchers at the UH.

Created date

02.06.2014 - 16:41

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.