Annual Report 2012

Annual Report 2012

Organisation 2012

The Head of the Department along with one deputy head are responsible for the operations of the department. In 2012, Professor Esko Ukkonen was head of the department and Professor Jyrki Kivinen was his deputy. In addition, there is a department council consisting of three professors, three representatives of the staff, and three students. The council members are appointed by election every fourth year. The department council has a secretary who distributes the documents for the meetings.
 
The teaching is divided into three sub-programmes and two Master's programmes. The directors of the sub-programmes in 2012 were Professor Jyrki Kivinen (algorithms and machine learning), Professor Sasu Tarkoma (networking and services) and Professor Jukka Paakki (software systems). The Master's programmes are headed by Professor Veli Mäkinen (Master's Degree Programme in Bioinformatics, MBI) and Professor Jussi Kangasharju (International CBU Master's Degree Programme in Information and Communication Technology). The department participates in four graduate schools; in addition, the director of the Hecse graduate school was Professor Petri Myllymäki.
 
The research is ordered into research units and project groups. Two research units, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT, in cooperation with Aalto University) and the Algodan (Algorithmic Data Analysis) Finnish Academy centre of excellence operate at the department. In addition, there are several research groups at the department, which also work inside the units. In 2012, the directors of HIIT was Professor Samuel Kaski of Aalto University, and Professor Esko Ukkonen was the director of Algodan.
 
The administration is divided into (1) teaching administration under the charge of Head of Studies Jaakko Kurhila, (2) general, staff and financial administration under the charge of Office Managers Pirjo Mulari (1.1.-31.3.2012), Päivi Kuuppelomäki (1.4.-31.7.2012) and Tiina Väisänen (1.8.-31.12.2012), (3) administration of research and doctoral education under the charge of Research Coordinator Pirjo Moen, and (4) the IT unit with IT Manager Petri Kutvonen in charge. Further, there is a studies committee, a postgraduate committee, a taskforce for improving teaching, a team for well-being in the workplace, and a library liaison at the department. There are representatives for the department in the faculty and the university councils.
 

Linus Torvalds - alumnus of the Department  of Computer Science - received the 2012 Millenium Technology Prize, awarded by Technology Academy Finland, together with Professor Shinya Yamanaka. Related to that Linus also visited the Kumpula campus in October 2012 and answered questions of students and staff during an informal session attended by some 300 guests and chaired by Professor Jukka Paakki.

Photographer: Arto Wikla.