HIIT Update 1/2007

Headlines in this issue:

- FOREWORD
- NEW PROJECTS AND GRANTS
- INTERNATIONAL EVALUATION OF FINNISH COMPUTER SCIENCE 2007
- CITYWALL PUBLIC MULTI-TOUCH DISPLAY IN LASIPALATSI
- PEKKA HIMANEN'S INNOVATION REPORT
- HIIT AND KTH ARRANGED JOINT SEMINAR
- HIIT RUOHOLAHTI UNIT MOVED TO SPEKTRI PILOTTI
- HIIT ANNUAL REPORT 2006
- SENIOR PERSONNEL NEWS
- FUTURE EVENTS

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FOREWORD

The programme of the new Finnish government mentions several initiatives regarding innovations, research, and universities. Perhaps the most significant one will be the proposed change of universities' legal status so that they become much more autonomous than before. The aim of the change is to facilitate their active role in creating innovations and turning them into practice.

The initiative that has been the most prominent - and controversial - in public is nevertheless the proposed merger of three universities in Helsinki to a new "innovation university" with the express mission of reaching world-class status in research. The universities concerned are Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Helsinki School of Economics (HSE), and University of Arts and Design Helsinki (UIAH). The idea appears to be that bringing engineering, business, and design more closely together is likely to offer new possibilities and incentives for innovative research and development, and of course also cross-disciplinary educational programmes.

As a joint institute of University of Helsinki and TKK, HIIT is deeply committed to the values of high-quality basic and strategic research. Hence it welcomes the new university initiative. HIIT has a long record of co-operation with both HSE and UIAH, and is actually a scale prototype of the "innovation university" in its own domain of research. HIIT's research interests cover themes where even deeper co- operation with researches from HSE and UIAH is attractive. At the same time, HIIT's commitment to basic research remains solid.

This issue of HIIT Update summarises the developments of a very busy first half of 2007. The first call of the 7th framework programme occurred in April, and HIIT participated in no less than eight project proposals, and additionally two other initiatives. The fruits of this effort will be learned during the summer 2007; it appears that the call was extremely competitive. As the spring was also punctuated by several national calls, those HIIT personnel that must participate in proposal generation have indeed been busy.

HIIT's Ruoholahti unit moved to new premises in Spektri Business Park in April 2007, and is thus now called Spektri unit. The move took place extremely smoothly, largely thanks to the active participation of Ruoholahti personnel who took active stance in its planning and execution. Special thanks are due to the IT team of HIIT that worked long hours to create the required network facilities in Spektri. While we surely miss the sea view, the new offices are fine and fit HIIT very well.

After all this, the vacation period now looming surely feels overdue. We wish all friends and relatives of HIIT a refreshing vacation and sunny skies!

Espoo 6 July 2007

Martti Mäntylä
(mailto:martti.mantyla(a)hiit.fi)
Esko Ukkonen
(mailto:esko.ukkonen(a)cs.helsinki.fi)
Co-directors, HIIT

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NEW PROJECTS AND GRANTS

InfraHIP II

TEKES has awarded 2,5 year funding for the Infrastructure for HIP II (InfraHIP II) project that continues HIIT's work on Host Identity Protocol focusing especially on engineering and deployment issues. The industrial partners of the project include Ericsson, Nokia, Elisa, TeliaSonera and Secgo. Adj. Prof. Andrei Gurtov is the leader of the project.

FINLAND-ICSI CENTER FOR NOVEL INTERNET ARCHITECTURE

As the demands on the Internet continue to grow, researchers are seeking to make the Internet more secure, reliable and flexible. Making substantial and qualitative changes in these properties may require radical, as opposed to incremental, change.

The Finland-ICSI Center for Novel Internet Architecture is devoted to exploring such radical changes. The pairing of Finnish and ICSI researchers is natural, as there is a strong history of collaboration between the two. In particular, the technical work being pursued by HIIT and ICSI complement each other very well, such as the overlap between the HIP project and various flat-naming projects at ICSI.

TEKES has awarded funding for the Finland-ICSI Center for Novel Internet Architecture covering its operation for the first three years. The funding will facilitate joint research activities, faculty and researcher exchange, and joint events to be run both in Finland and in California. For more information, please contact Prof. Martti Mäntylä (mailto:martti.mantyla(a)hiit.fi) at HIIT or Prof. Scott Shenker at ICSI.

PUPS

TEKES has awarded two-year funding for the project Personalized Ubiservices in Public Spaces (PUPS) from its Ubicom programme. The project will focus on studying proactive behaviours (related to content or its representation) informed by context-awareness and user modelling. The research consortium combines groups from three of HIIT's research programmes (FI, NS, and PAS) with VTT Oulu. For more information, please contact Dr. Patrik Floréen (mailto:patrik.floreen(a)hiit.fi), Dr. Esko Kurvinen, or Prof. Petri Myllymäki.

INNOGUARD

TEKES has donated three-year funding for the project Innoguard, a joint effort of Helsinki University of Technology (Prof. Eljas Soisalon-Soininen), Lappeenranta University of Technology (Prof. Jukka Kemppinen) and HIIT (Dr. Perttu Virtanen). The project will study the use of program run-time execution trace analysis for detecting the presence of predefined "signatures" suggesting that the program uses a method covered by a patent.

MOBILE CITY MOMENTS

TEKES has awarded 2,5 year funding for the CELTIC project Mobile City Moments (MCM). The project will study new mobile services enabled by positioning, group communication, context sensitivity, presence data, and machine-readable tags. It draws inspiration from "Web 2.0" technologies and mash-ups, aiming to identify essential customer values and business model elements driving viable services. The project will carry out user research and show prototypes in three European cities: Helsinki, Stockholm, and Barcelona. The international consortium is led by Stockholm School of Economics. The other Finnish partners are Idean Research and TeliaSonera. For more information, please contact Dr. Giulio Jacucci (mailto:giulio.jacucci(a)hiit.fi) or Dr. Risto Sarvas (mailto:risto.sarvas(a)hiit.fi).

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INTERNATIONAL EVALUATION OF FINNISH COMPUTER SCIENCE 2007

As part of the International Evaluation of Finnish Computer Science 2007 organised by the Academy of Finland, an international evaluation panel visited HIIT on 28 June 2007. HIIT researchers presented the institute and its research programmes, and the panel had the opportunity to ask questions and discuss HIIT's self evaluation report that was returned earlier this year.

The panel interviewed 27 units involved in computer science research in Finland during the week 25-29 June 2007 and will later publish an evaluation report of their findings.

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CITYWALL PUBLIC MULTI-TOUCH DISPLAY IN LASIPALATSI

HIIT demonstrates the CityWall, a large multi-touch display in Lasipalatsi (Simonkatu side) in central Helsinki. It acts as a collaborative and playful interface for the everchanging media landscape of the city. The content displayed is periodically organized into themes or events that are currently taking place in the city such as festivals, carnivals or sports events.

The CityWall is designed to support the navigation of media, specifically annotated photos and videos which are continuously gathered in realtime from public sources such as Flickr and YouTube. To contribute content to the CityWall people can send pictures and videos via MMS or email. Alternatively, tag your media on YouTube or Flickr with 'Helsinki' and we will pick up your media and display it here on the CityWall.

The touchscreen technology and applications have been developed Dr Tommi Ilmonen, John Evans, and Dr. Giulio Jacucci from the Ubiquitous Interaction research group. The development and set up has been co-funded by the 6th Framework Research Programme of the European Union (EU), through the IPCity project (FP-2004-IST-4-27571) which investigates Mixed Reality Interaction and Presence in Urban Environments. The installation in Lasipalatsi is supported by the Helsinki Cultural Office.

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PEKKA HIMANEN'S INNOVATION REPORT

Prof. Pekka Himanen's report The Finnish Dream (Suomalainen unelma), was published in an event held by the Centennary Fund of the Technology Industries of Finland.

The report (see at http://www.teknologiateollisuus.fi/files/15064_suomalainen_unelma.pdf) characterises innovation driven economy and society, and studies the underlying culture of creativity. It is a summary in Finnish of a larger monograph to be published later in English. The reported work has been performed in the 5-year project Global Network Society funded by the Centennary Fund.

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HIIT AND KTH ARRANGED JOINT SEMINAR

HIIT's Network Society programme and the department of Media Technology and Graphic Arts from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm arranged a joint research seminar in Helsinki and Stockholm. A team of 15 researchers from KTH, led by professor Nils Enlund, first visited Helsinki on March 14. Another 15 researchers from HIIT, led by professor Marko Turpeinen, joined the KTH team on voyage to Stockholm where the second part of the seminar was held on March 15.

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HIIT RUOHOLAHTI UNIT MOVED TO SPEKTRI PILOTTI

The HIIT personnel located previously in HTC Helsinki in Ruoholahti has moved to the Pilotti building in Spektri business park next to TKK campus in Espoo. The new visiting address of the unit is Metsänneidonkuja 4, Espoo. The postal address (HIIT, FI-02015 TKK, Finland) and telephone numbers remain unchanged. See location map for driving instructions and public transport connections at http://www.spektri.fi/sijainti.php .

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HIIT ANNUAL REPORT 2006

HIIT Annual Report 2006 was published June 1 2007 and can be seen here.

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SENIOR PERSONNEL NEWS

1.6.2007: The Finnish Information Processing Association has given its award for the best doctoral thesis in computer science for 2006 to Dr. Risto Sarvas from HIIT for his dissertation Designing User-Centric Metadata for Digital Snapshot Photography. The work was done in the DCC research group. See http://www.ttlry.fi/?x23586=7049531 for more information in Finnish.

21.5.2007: The City of Helsinki Science Award was conferred to Professor Esko Ukkonen in recognition of his work on methods for processing large and complex data sets.

21.2.2007: Dr. Jukka Kemppinen was nominated as Professor in Law, especially information and technology law, from 1.3.2007 in the School of Business at Lappeenranta University of Technology. He has been professor pro tem in Lappeenranta since 2003. Dr. Kemppinen is also an adjunct professor (docent) in University of Helsinki (legal science) since 1994 and University of Turku (cultural history) since 2005.

9.6.2007: HIIT researcher Teemu Roos defended his doctoral thesis "Statistical and Information-Theoretic Methods for Data Analysis" in the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki.

8.6.2007: Jarkko Venna defended his doctoral thesis "Dimensionality reduction for visual exploration of similarity structures" in the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki.

29.5.2007: Mika Raento defended his doctoral thesis "Exploring Privacy for Ubiquitous Computing: Tools, Methods and Experiments" in the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki. The opponent was Professor Kari-Jouko Räihä (University of Tampere) and the custos Professor Hannu Toivonen.

25.5.2007: HIIT and TML researcher Kristiina Karvonen defended her doctoral thesis "Bridging the Gap between Human and Machine Trust" in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at TKK. The official opponent was Professor L. Jean Camp, Indiana University, USA. The custos was Professor Antti Ylä-Jääski.

4.5.2007: HIIT researcher Esko Kurvinen presented his doctoral thesis "Prototyping Social Action" at the Helsinki University of Arts and Design. The official opponent was Dr. Jack Whalen from PARC.

3.3.2007: The former HIIT researcher Aura Soininen presented her doctoral dissertation "Patents in the Information and Communications Technology Sector" at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. The custos was Professor Jukka Kemppinen and the opponent Professor Lionel Bently from University of Cambridge.

2.3.2007: HIIT researcher Antti Leino presented his doctoral thesis "On Toponymic Constructions as an Alternative to Naming Patters in Describing Finnish Lake Names" at the University of Helsinki. The opponent was Doc. Staffan Nyström from University of Stockholm and custos Professor Tapani Lehtinen.

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FUTURE EVENTS

HIIT BOARD MEETING on 12 September 2007 at 11:00 in Kumpula/ Exactum, Department of Computer Science, UH.

HIIT arranges ICML, UAI, and COLT conferences
- ICML 6.-9.7.2008 (Hannu Toivonen)
- UAI 8.-11.7.2008 (Petri Myllymäki)
- COLT 9.-12.7.2008 (Jyrki Kivinen)

More details will be given as the planning progresses.