The First Europe-China Workshop on Big Data Management

Some attenders of this workshopThe first Europe-China workshop on big data management was successfully held on the 16th of May, 2016 at the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki. 

This one-day workshop organized by Prof. Jiaheng Lu (University of Helsinki), Prof. Xiaoyong Du (Renmin University of China), and Prof. Christian S. Jensen (Aalborg University, Denmark). The aims of this workshop were to gather experts in big data management to exchange views on cutting-edge data management problems and create opportunities for establishing new collaborations between EU and China computer scientists.

The local host Prof. Jiaheng Lu delivered the opening speech and the department head, Prof. Sasu Tarkoma introduced the research achievements of the department. Then ten speakers gave high-quality talks, which covered diverse topics on big data management, such as big data implementations, big data cleansing, spatial data, social media data, cognitive data, cloud data, graph data, streaming data and real-life examples for big data. The invited speakers were Dr. Mohammad Hoque (University of Helsinki), Heikki Hämäläinen (Eficode Oy, Finland), Prof. Hua Lu (Aalborg University), Prof. Shuai Ma (Beihang University, China), Prof. Nikos Mamoulis (University of Ioannina, Greece), Prof. Jianliang Xu (Hong Kong Baptist University), Prof. Ge Yu (Northeastern University, China), Prof. Demetris Zeinalipour (University of Cyprus), Prof. Xiaofang Zhou (University of Queensland, Australia and Soochow University, China) and Prof. Yongluan Zhou (University of Southern Denmark).

 

Prof. Sasu Tarkoma talked on the research in the department

Photo 2: Prof. Sasu Tarkoma talked on the research at the department.

 

Some audiences in the workshop

Photo 3: Some audience in the workshop.

 

Big data management is the organization, administration and governance of large volumes of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. The goal of big data management is to ensure a high level of data quality and accessibility for business intelligence and big data analytics applications.

More than thirty professors and students joined this workshop. The organization of workshop was assisted by PhD students Pengfei Xu, Heli Helskyaho and Chao Zhang. The presentation topics and slides about this workshop can be found at http://udbms.cs.helsinki.fi/BigData2016/.

 

Created date

17.06.2016 - 11:05

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.