Esko Ukkonen (born 1950) is since 1985 Professor of Computer Science of the 
University of Helsinki. Since 2010 he is also the Head of the Department of 
Computer Science. He has had visiting positions at the University of 
California at Berkeley, the University of Freiburg (Alexander von Humboldt Grant), 
and the University of Bielefeld. Dr Ukkonen has published about 160 original scientific 
articles. His research interests include algorithms and data structures, 
combinatorial pattern matching, machine learning, and computational biology
(biological sequence analysis in particular). Dr Ukkonen is a member of the 
Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the 
Nordic Journal of Computing. In 1999-2001 he was the chairman of the Finnish Society 
for Computer Science, in 1999-2004 an Academy Professor of the Academy of Finland, and 
in 2004-2008 Research Director of the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology (HIIT). 
The honours he has received include the Biotechnology Prize of the Alko Group (1996) 
and the Science Prize of the City of Helsinki (2007).