Petri Myllymäki to be director of HIIT

Petri Myllymäki, professor at the department, has been elected director of HIIT (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology), the joint research institute of the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, for the five-year period starting on 1 August, 2015. Petri will be following Professor Sami Kaski of Aalto University in this post. Since the post of director of HIIT is a fulltime job, Petri (PM) will be relieved of his own professorial duties for the same period, and so the head of the department (JP) saw fit to conduct an exit interview with him.

 

JP: Why did you apply for the post as director of HIIT?

 

PM: Objectively, my motive was the important mission of HIIT, now and in the future. My personal motive was that I’ve been working as a professor and principal investigator for a long time now, and I was looking for new challenges. Now I will gain close insight into the parts of HIIT that I haven’t known before, for example.

 

JP: What do you think is the current status of computer science in Finland, and what position does HIIT hold in the research field? Does HIIT have its own profile?

 

PM: The status is good, but it could be better. The spearhead of Finnish computer science, the Helsinki region, is close to the top of Europe (and the world), but we still have a way to go to reach the absolute summit. HIIT is a significant player in reaching this goal, as it offers the framework for the University of Helsinki and Aalto University to collaborate, promoting a joint venture to the top, which would be harder separately. HIIT has especially profiled itself through quality research into data science, which is a good example of a more extensive and ambitious theme that neither university would be able to invest in sufficiently alone. In general, digitalisation is a huge opportunity for the Helsinki region and HIIT.

 

JP: How could we improve the research into computer science in Finland?

 

PM: It can be improved by recruitment of top scientists, which in turn requires efficient branding (e.g. the stamp ‘Helsinki ICT’). The restricted funds should be used to support collaborative research areas to gain a better impact than currently.

 

JP: In which direction, and using which methods, will you develop HIIT?

 

PM: I’m not going to fix what’s not broken; according to the Scientific Advisory Board of HIIT, it has done excellent work so far, so that should continue. It is too soon to envision new research endeavours; we’ll see what happens to HIIT during e.g. the structural development process (RAKE). I think bottom-up is a good direction for new research ideas, in addition to the top-down strategic outlines. I will try to delete the problems stemming from history that have been caused by HIIT's position as an 'ivory tower' separated from the base departments.

 

JP: Should we develop the collaboration between the department and corresponding departments at Aalto? In which way and how much? What is the role of HIIT in this collaboration?

 

PM: We already have other collaborations between the department and Aalto, besides HIIT, such as the doctoral education network. We should increase our cooperation and coordination within our basic education, as well, and HIIT would be a natural aid for that. Some day, we may even be looking at a shared department of the Helsinki region, or a faculty or even a university.

 

JP: Will we see you at the department in the future, or will you completely disappear to Otaniemi?

 

PM: Even as director of HIIT, I will still have my own research group working at the department. In future, I will work in Otaniemi more than now, about fifty-sixty to Kumpula. In my teaching, I will be focusing more on tutoring under- and postgraduates, and less on classroom courses.

 

JP: Do you have any elated ‘exit words’?

 

PM: Our general motto in CoSCo was ‘Just do it,’ which Nike later stole so rudely. In the Doctoral school in natural sciences, I’ve introduced the motto ‘Mostly harmless’ to illustrate how the administrative bodies should affect the lives of researchers. This aspect will be part of my future work, as one of the pleasant tasks of the director is to consider the relationship between administration and research organisation.

 

Created date

28.05.2015 - 10:17

Brain poetry

In the latest research result of the month section, we interview PhD student Jukka Toivanen about his recent work on brain poetry in the Discovery group led by professor Hannu Toivonen. How can humans and machines be creative together?

Kjell Lemström to be new Head of Studies

Since Jaakko Kurhila left the department to head the Open University, we had to find a new university lecturer to act as head of studies in short order. We received a total of 28 applications. Out of these, and after a preliminary qualification round, evaluations, interviews, and a department council hearing, Kjell Lemström (KL) was elected for the post. He started working as the department's Head of Studies on 2 March 2015, so the Head of the department (JP) conducted the following induction interview that very week.

This is by no means the first time Kjell has been employed by the department. He defended his thesis on ‘String Matching Techniques for Music Retrieval’ in 2000, and has held numerous teaching and research positions both before and after that, until he transferred to the Laurea University of Applied Sciences in 2011 (luckily, that was only temporary).

Head of Studies Jaakko Kurhila to head Open University

The Head of Studies at the department, University Lecturer Jaakko Kurhila, has been elected to the post of director of the Open University at the University of Helsinki. It was a tough race: all in all, 39 applicants sought the post, some of them through the Mercuri Urval headhunting process. After a consultant evaluation, interviews, and aptitude assessments, the preparatory committee for the post, the steering committee for the Open University, and the rector of the university came to a unanimous decision to select Jaakko, and the contract is already being drawn up.

Being selected from this prestigious group of applicants, and after such a thorough process, is indisputable proof of the qualifications of Jaakko and the high esteem the academic community has for him. The department extends its warmest congratulations to Jaakko for this career development and is proud of the success of its protégé.

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Standardization

In the fourth research result of the month, we report a joint work between the UH NODES group and the Cambridge NetOS group, lead by Prof. Sasu Tarkoma and Prof. Jon Crowcroft, respectively. Their work recently received the best paper award "Best of CCR" from ACM SIGCOMM.