The Department of Computer Science gives annual awards for teachers who have actively improved the quality of teaching and researchers for high-standard scientific work. In addition, the department rewards a person or team that has stood out in a positive way during the year.

On 17 December, at the annual Christmas coffees this year, the awards were given to the following people/team:

Researcher of the Year for junior researchers: Doctoral Student Ella Peltonen 

"Ella has made excellent progress during her two years of postgraduate studies: She has already completed all the credits she needs and she has two quality Jufo 2-level publications, one of which won the award for best paper at the PerCom conference, leader in the field.  Ella has also been visiting researcher at Berkeley and Cambridge. Besides her own postgraduate studies, she has been active in teaching at the department, e.g. by supervising BSc and MSc theses. Ella has a lot of potential, and her publishing career so far indicates that her thesis will be finished on time and reach a high standard."

Researcher of the Year for senior researchers: Academy Research Fellow Simon Puglisi

”Simon is a most productive researcher in a number of areas, such as theoretical computer science, information systems, bioinformatics, and stringology. He has published about 20 journal articles and 60 conference articles in good international forums, with h-index 23. Simon has a broad international research network, he has been member in several international programme committees and co-chair in the international symposium SPIRE 2015. In 2015, he has been nominated as Academy Research Fellow by the Academy of Finland.”

Teacher of the Year for junior teachers: Part-time teacher Johannes Verwijnen

“Johannes is very active on many fronts. He likes to teach and is an enthusiastic developer of teaching in the sub-programme for algorithms, data analysis and machine learning. Johannes is a pro-active supervisor of exercise sessions, highly rated by the students, especially in the courses that are considered hard within the sub-programme. In addition, he is a diligent and well informed assessor of teaching skills in the faculty's committees for evaluating teaching skills, not just in computer science but the other disciplines, as well."

Picture:  Johannes Verwijnen & Ella Peltonen

Teacher of the Year Lecturer Heikki Lokki

“Heikki is a trailblazer and a true hero when it comes to developing the teaching at the department. It is largely thanks to his persevering and determined work that the teaching at the department has risen to the top of Finnish university pedagogy in the 2000s.  As the justification for the Eino Kaila award given to Heikki in 2009 states, he is an excellent example of how a university instructor can inspire the staff and students of a large department into improving the quality of teaching and learning in collaboration with the department leadership and the members of the teaching development committee. This award for Teacher of the Year can definitely be considered a Lifetime Achievement Award, as well.”

Team of the Year: Resource centre Linkki

“The computer science resource centre, Linkki, which is part of the multi-disciplinary LUMA centre of the University of Helsinki, organises many activities for young people interested in the field. The most central Linkki activities include clubs and camps for schoolchildren, remedial education for teachers, the MOOC online community, and coaching for programming competitions. The work of Linkki is first class, both in quantity and quality: Hundreds of children attend its clubs and camps annually, and the coaching has brought outstanding successes to teams representing the department and Finland in international programming competitions, including the ICT Olympics. Linkki is an excellent example of merited, long-term voluntary work that is relevant to societal needs.”

Picture:  Topi Talvitie (right) Ada-Maaria Hyvärinen, Antti Laaksonen, Lea Kutvonen