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.

 

n addition to Timonen, Finland was represented at the Intel ISEF competition by Maisa Virtanen and Kaisla Kääriäinen from the Päivölä Institute, who had developed an urban ecological teaching game, and by two 9th graders from Helsinki, Emma Järvi and Ella Forsman, who had studied pre-treating stains with different detergents.
 
Bonus prize – a star named after you
 
Timonen also received a bonus prize worth more than money can measure. Along with all the first- and second-prize winners, he will have an asteroid discovered by the LINEAR programme (Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) named after him. Asteroids that might collide with earth and cause damage will not be named after the young winners.
 
Succeeding internationally via national competition
 
Timonen entered his work in the Finnish Tutki-Kokeile-Kehitä competition in spring 2015 and won the category for high school students. Based on that, he was selected to represent Finland in the EU Young Scientists in Milan. There he was awarded the Intel ISEF special prize, which was the trip to the science fair in Arizona.
 
The Tutki-Kokeile-Kehitä competition is organised by Development Centre Opinkirjo and Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland TEK. The number of participants has been growing steadily during the past years. The annual Intel ISEF event is the largest international science and technology competition for upper-secondary students. The six-day fair attracted over 1700 young scientists from 77 different countries. The projects of the finalists were assessed on-site by around one thousand judges representing different fields of science.

Created date

17.05.2016 - 15:35

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.