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

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.