Biomine received funding from Tekes

The Biomine project has been granted EUR 110.000 by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. The project, headed by Prof. Hannu Toivonen, is among the very first ones to receive funding for preparation of commercialization, from a new instrument just launched by Tekes.

The Biomine system provides a new way for finding information, based on (chains of) associations. In bioinformatics, a prototype of Biomine (biomine.cs.helsinki.fi) has shown great potential in allowing researchers to search and explore information by finding and visualizing indirect relationships between concepts such as genes, biological processes and phenotypes. The technology is domain independent, however, and could be used for other domains as well. The current version of Biomine consists of algorithms and software developed in a previous Tekes research project.

The purpose of the current project is to improve the commercial potential of Biomine by (1) verifying the feasibility of the concept in pilot studies, (2) improving the existing research prototype to a more robust level, and (3) developing an understanding of the market and business opportunities. The project is scheduled to span the calendar year 2009.

Created date

07.02.2009 - 01:00

After Facebook visit, studying looks like work

University research and education laboratory Software Factory has launched a new kind of Open Source collaboration with the software industry and leading universities like Stanford University and MIT.

How do we keep students engaged until graduation, and how could young people be offered something they cannot already learn at work? These are big enough challenges for more than one university.

Not just the local hero

For the Department of Computer Science, the well-being of international staff has a long history. Everyday communication in English is an essential part of this.

“It makes no sense to be just the local hero. If we want to develop further, we’ll need to follow international research standards” emphasises Juergen Muench. The German Professor has been leading the Software Systems Engineering research group at Helsinki University’s Department of Computer Science since 2011.

Linus Torvalds inspiring department students


Linus Torvalds – alumnus of the department, doctor honoris causa of the University of Helsinki, the best known representative of Finnish computer science internationally – visited the Kumpula campus on 23 October. He answered the questions of students and staff during an informal Q&A session attended by some 300 guests. As the floor was open, and Torvalds emphasized that all questions were welcomed, the queries ranged from extreme to extreme

Exactum rooftop greenhouse experiment grows herbs

A greenhouse has been built on the roof of Exactum in a collaboration by the Department of Computer Science and the Fifth Dimension science project. To begin with, sedum grass is growing on the roof and tomatoes, courgettes and chilli in the greenhouse. The greenhouse is 9.4 square metres large.

The motivation for the computer scientists is the estimation that 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans are emitted by equipment using information technology. This is more than e.g. air traffic produces globally. To the scientists, this is reason enough to look into how to decrease the impact of information technology on global warming.