The PhD defense was enjoyable for Oriana Riva

Oriana Riva defended her PhD dissertation "Middleware for Mobile Sensing Applications in Urban Environments" on 2nd November, and enjoyed the experience.

-It was a day I will always remember. I was surprised when during the defense I realized I was having fun. I couldn't believe it! I also liked my "karonkka" and, of course, had a very Italian speech. I could have spoken for hours...

The birth of the thesis is less clear.

- I have no idea why I chose this subject! I took a course of Patrik Floréen and Greger Lindén on context-aware computing and found it interesting. Then I met Kimmo Raatikainen in the printer room and on the way to his office I asked if I could work on this subject. His answer was "Why not?". On the way back to my office I started my PhD.

Oriana found her PhD subject on December 2003 and claims she could have finished quicker.

Oriana came to Helsinki first in year 2000 for a traineeship in Nokia Research Centre, where her brother already worked. Some years after meeting Kimmo in NRC, she was looking for a subject for her Master's thesis. She asked Kimmo for a subject, moved to Helsinki and stayed for her PhD too.

-I come from a small city close to Milan. Finland is so different from Italy, Oriana says and lists differences in the two countries: noise level, stress level, mountains level.

-In Finland, you need a lot of time to get to know people, but then it is for ever. In Italy, you meet so easily a lot of people but so easily you also forget about each other.

In the beginning of December, Oriana will join ETH-Zürich. She likes the group she has found there. She tells it is very rare to find a true system-oriented research group in Europe. Many researchers like only simulating stuff. Our new PhD prefers applied research, large testbeds and real devices.

For now Oriana does not want to be in touch with business. She prefers the freedom the academia can give her.

- I will try the academic career, let's see what happens!

Sanna Kettunen