Esko Ukkonen (born 1950) is since 1985 Professor of Computer Science of the University of Helsinki and since 2014 the Vice-Dean (research) of the Faculty of Science. He has had visiting positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Freiburg, and the University of Bielefeld. Dr Ukkonen has published more than 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). 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 since 2002 he has been directing a center-of-excellence ('From Data to Knowledge','Algorithmic Data Analysis') of the Academy of Finland. In 2004-2008, he was Research Director of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), a joint institute of the Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, and in 2010-2013, he served as the head of the Department of Computer Science. Dr Ukkonen has received the Biotechnology Prize of the Alko Group (1996) and the Science Prize of the City of Helsinki (2007), and he is a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.