News

The Academy of Finland awarded funding for three projects with HIIT research groups in the Proactive Computing program.

The opening ceremony of the Berkeley Center for the Information Society was held at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, hosted by Prof. Nelson Morgan, Director of ICSI and Dr. Pekka Himanen, Director of the Center. To honour the occasion, Jukka Valtasaari, the Finnish Ambassador to the US, decorated the Chairman of the Center’s Research Board, Prof. Manuel Castells. HIIT’s The Welfare of Nations project will be one of the first research activities associated with the new Center.

HIIT arranged a seminar describing its planned research portfolio for 2003, prepared for the coming national and European calls.

TEKES awarded funding for the project EVIUS: European Virtual Testbed for Location Based Ubiquitous Services. The objective of the project is to prepare and launch the follow-up research program for the national program NAVI – Personal Navigation (2000-2002). A major aim of the follow-up program is to establish a European network of test sites for developing and studying next generation location-enhanced mobile digital services. Dr. Martti Mäntylä leads the project, and Mikko Kontiainen acts as the project manager.

WWW pages for HIIT’s electronic publications were published. HIIT Publications is intended for longer research reports originating from HIIT authors; conference and workshop proceedings held in connection with HIIT activities; project documentation; and other material as may be deemed appropriate. It will also appear in printed form. The HIIT Technical Reports series is intended for rapid dissemination of articles and papers by HIIT authors submitted for publication elsewhere.

The Board of HIIT appointed Dr. Patrik Floréen as the Research Coordinator of HIIT for the 3-year period of August 1, 2002 through July 31, 2005. In addition to conducting independent research, his activities will mainly be targeted to coordinating international research, particularly EU-funded activities, covering both the Advanced Research and the Basic Research units of HIIT.

HIIT submitted five Expressions of Interest in response to the call of the European Commission on suggestions of topics to be included in its Sixth Framework Programme. In addition, HIIT joined several other EoI’s submitted by its European partners.

The second HIIT-UCB Summer School was held in University of California at Berkeley, with professors Kimmo Raatikainen and Randy Katz chairing the event.

Prof. Hal R. Varian, Dean of the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) at the University of California at Berkeley, visited HIIT. A seminar covering HIIT research was arranged.

HIIT submitted three proposals for the general research project call of the Academy of Finland. In addition, one proposal was also submitted to the Life as Learning program call.