Helsinki ICT Research News

Project course led to the creation of a mobile game—collecting sensor data from the environment using a magic wand (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Students created a mobile game that’s played on a real map of the players’ surroundings. They collect phone sensor data from the environment with a magic wand and use it in battles.

In the yearly Software Project course of the Department of Computer Science students pick an interesting project from options proposed by companies or by Aalto University. The Balance of Magic mobile game started from the students’ desire to do something exceptional in game development.

They wanted to incorporate the real world, augmented reality, mixed reality and the Internet of Things into a single game.

‘The premise was a Bluetooth device, a magic wand, which is connected to a mobile phone and collects sensor values from the real world. The game is played on a real map. As a player moves around he or she can battle the game’s characters approaching on the map. The collected sensor data becomes handy in fights: ice energy mined from the environment can be used to fight a fire character,’ describes Ville Hiltunen, who was responsible for the development of the magic wand.

The team made up of eight students first had problems adapting the size of the project to their aims, contents and hourly limits of the course. The ability to follow through with a project plan is one of the most important lessons learned from the course, and there the team received help from the project owner, Aalto University Researcher Antti Nurminen.

‘The problem-solving skills exhibited by the team were very impressive, even though the team encountered many technical challenges due to the project’s large scope and versatility,’ Nurminen explains.

During the project, the student team also learned the importance of the interaction and seamless teamwork: every member must, at all times, be aware of the project’s overall status.

‘Even a small change in the project plan and design or a specific area of the project can have a significant effect on the project on the whole’ says Jouni Osmala, who focused on game graphics and their implementation.

In addition to Hiltunen and Osmala the bold project team’s members included Miro Aurela, Atte Haarakangas, Eero Mänty, Marko Rajala, Stefan Stenstrand and Niclas Vauhkonen. The results of the project are in use in Aalto’s new NEPPI course (Networked Partnering and Product Innovation), and, when applicable, in the EU H2020-funded SOFIE project.

A new Software Project course began once again in September, and a total of around 30 topics have been proposed by partners such as Elisa, Futurice, Relex, Sievo and KONE. Students get to pick the most interesting ones.

BiographySampo, a new intelligent web service, displays the lives and connections of renowned Finns (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 21:00:00 +0000

What do the personal networks of Alvar Aalto, Jean Sibelius or Eliel Saarinen look like and how do they intertwine? The application is based on over 13 000 biographies.

The BiographySampo is a data service that enables anyone to easily browse and study the information in biographies and related data sources. The application is based on more than 13 000 short biographies in the National Biography of the Finnish Literature Society and other databases. The material has been enriched with information from other sources: for instance, the collections of the National Library, material from the National Archives, Ateneum Art Museum’s collections, and Wikipedia.

The service compiles and links information about the lives and networks of renowned historical Finns into a new kind of knowledge graph on the semantic web.

‘BiographySampo offers new kinds of tools for carrying out digital humanities research and data analysis of biographies using artificial intelligence and linked open data technologies. With language technology, the texts have been transformed into a data service that can be used to study Finnish history and make connections between people, places and events in surprising ways’, says the project’s director, Aalto University Professor Eero Hyvönen, who also directs the Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (HELDIG) at the University of Helsinki.

The BiographySampo can also be used to study groups of people and social networks based on time, place, professional activities, or various topics. They can be visualised, analysed and compared using maps, timelines, and network analysis.

‘The service can be used to outline Finnish history through prominent individuals and their networks. The underlying language analysis can also be used to find differences in vocabularies and discourse in biographies,’ Hyvönen explains.

In the biographies of male Members of Parliament (MP) in Finland, for example, the word ‘lead’ is mentioned much more often than in the biographies of female MPs, where the word ‘family’ features heavily.

‘The new tools help people to piece together the multi-dimensional biographical data and networks of Finnish people across generations. The multifaceted range of smart tools that make up the service is completely unique’, says Dr. Kirsi Keravuori, Managing Editor of the Biographical Centre of the Finnish Literature Society.

The BiographySampo is a new edition in the Sampo series of linked open data applications developed by Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. The applications already released include the CultureSampo (2009), BookSampo (2011), and WarSampo (2015). The award-winning applications have had hundreds of thousands of users.

Aalto University, the Finnish Literature Society (SKS), and the Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki (HELDIG) will launch the BiographySampo online service 27 September in the great hall of the Finnish Literature Society, 1 PM–4PM at Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki.

More information on BiographySampo:
https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/projects/biografiasampo/en

Registration for the publication event:
https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/events/2018/2018-09-27-biografiasampo/

Further information:
Eero Hyvönen
Professor, Aalto University
Director, University of Helsinki, HELDIG Centre
eero.hyvonen@aalto.fi
tel. +358 50 3841618

Kirsi Keravuori
Managing Editor
Finish Literature Society Biography Centre
kirsi.keravuori@finlit.fi
tel. +358 40 5640264

For Chris Brzuska, truth and understanding are supreme virtues (Aalto CS News)

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Assistant Professor Chris Brzuska feels very lucky to be able to interact with great people in mathematics and computer science in a meaningful way, every single day.

What kind of research do you do?

In April 2018, I started as an Assistant Professor at both the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis and the Department of Computer Science. My research is about cryptography and its connections to IT security, verification, complexity theory, algorithms, and discrete mathematics.

For four years already, I have been part of a vast, collaborative effort in analysing and standardising a new version of the TLS protocol. It’s the main protocol for secure communication on the internet, for instance online banking.

Our informal group includes experts from both industry and academia. The design of the protocol for secure communication is a huge task, and we are now in the final stages of the project. One of the difficulties is backward compatibility: we need to make sure that the new protocol is compatible with the old versions but does not inherit their security weaknesses.

How did you become a researcher?

When I finished high school, I had plans of becoming a very successful banker. Although the banking business was a lot of fun, I realised I was not really accelerating my personal growth. After only six months in banking, at the age of 19, I decided that instead, I want to become a researcher in mathematics.

I studied mathematics in Germany and in Southern France. During my master’s studies, I ended up in a computer science class designing secure cryptography against arbitrary and adverse algorithms. I enjoyed that a lot.

Marc Fischlin, the professor of cryptography at Technische Universität Darmstadt, offered me a PhD position in the same research area—and I accepted the offer. Soon I ended up at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for six months, followed by Tel Aviv University and Microsoft research in Cambridge.

Finally, I started as an assistant professor for IT Security Analysis at the Hamburg University of Technology where I worked closely with NXP Semiconductors for two and a half years before moving to Finland and Aalto University.

What are the highlights of your career?

I rather enjoy the highlights every single day. I feel very lucky and grateful that I can interact with great people in a way that is beneficial for both them and myself.

What is the most important quality for a researcher?

In my opinion, a good researcher is interested in and committed to truth and understanding.

I find it meaningful and fulfilling that research allows me to grow my understanding, not only of cryptography, but of many other topics as well. In teaching, I have the chance to help my students grow their ability to understand, regardless of the topic. I find it very rewarding.

What do you expect from the future?

During the interview process, I came to Finland for several days and felt comfortable. Already then, I had a very strong gut feeling Aalto will be a good environment for research and teaching—and me personally.

I have started to collaborate with my colleagues in discrete mathematics, algorithms and IT security, and I have already taught my first class. I can now confirm that Aalto is a good environment for research and teaching—and I look forward to continue enjoying to be here.

You can’t tell whether an online restaurant review is fake—but this AI can (Aalto CS News)

Sun, 16 Sep 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Researchers find AI-generated reviews and comments pose a significant threat to consumers, but machine learning can help detect the fakes.

Sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Amazon display user reviews of products and services. Consumers take heed: nine out of ten people read these peer reviews and trust what they see. In fact, up to 40% of users decide to make a purchase based on only a couple of reviews, and great reviews make people spend 30% more on their purchases.

Yet not all reviews are legitimate. Fake reviews written by real people are already common on review sites, but the amount of fakes generated by machines is likely to increase substantially.

According to doctoral student Mika Juuti at Aalto University, fake reviews based on algorithms are nowadays easy, accurate and fast to generate. Most of the time, people are unable to tell the difference between genuine and machine-generated fake reviews.

‘Misbehaving companies can either try to boost their sales by creating a positive brand image artificially or by generating fake negative reviews about a competitor. The motivation is, of course, money: online reviews are a big business for travel destinations, hotels, service providers and consumer products,’ says Mika Juuti.

In 2017, researchers from the University of Chicago described a method for training a machine learning model, a deep neural network, using a dataset of three million real restaurant ratings on Yelp. After the training, the model generated fake restaurant reviews character by character.

There was a slight hiccup in the method, however; it had a hard time staying on topic. For a review of a Japanese restaurant in Las Vegas, the model could make references to an Italian restaurant in Baltimore. These kinds of errors are, of course, easily spotted by readers.

To help the review generator stay on the mark, Juuti and his team used a technique called neural machine translation to give the model a sense of context. Using a text sequence of ‘review rating, restaurant name, city, state, and food tags’, they started to obtain believable results.

‘In the user study we conducted, we showed participants real reviews written by humans and fake machine-generated reviews and asked them to identify the fakes. Up to 60% of the fake reviews were mistakenly thought to be real,’ says Juuti.

Juuti and his colleagues then devised a classifier that would be able to spot the fakes. The classifier turned out to perform well, particularly in cases where human evaluators had the most difficulties in telling whether a review is real or not.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Aalto University’s Secure Systems research group and researchers from Waseda University in Japan. It was presented at the 2018 European Symposium on Research in Computer Security in September.

The work is part of an ongoing project called Deception Detection via Text Analysis in the Secure Systems group at Aalto University.

Research articles:
Mika Juuti, Bo Sun, Tatsuya Mori, N. Asokan:
Stay On-Topic: Generating Context-specific Fake Restaurant Reviews. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.02400

More information:
Mika Juuti, Doctoral Candidate
Aalto University
Secure Systems group
mika.juuti@aalto.fi
tel. +358 50 560 7944

N. Asokan, Professor
Aalto University
Secure Systems group
n.asokan@aalto.fi
tel. +358 50 483 6465

News (UH CS News)

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 13:54:17 +0000

Our paper at the 3^rd Conference on Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries received the Best Paper award and the Open Science award.
Thanks to all our team members and collaborators at home and abroad!

Hate speech-detecting AIs are fools for ‘love’ (Aalto CS News)

Thu, 13 Sep 2018 21:00:00 +0000

State-of-the-art detectors that screen out online hate speech can be easily duped by humans, shows new study.

Hateful text and comments are an ever-increasing problem in online environments, yet addressing the rampant issue relies on being able to identify toxic content. A new study by the Aalto University Secure Systems research group has discovered weaknesses in many machine learning detectors currently used to recognize and keep hate speech at bay.

Many popular social media and online platforms use hate speech detectors that a team of researchers led by Professor N. Asokan have now shown to be brittle and easy to deceive. Bad grammar and awkward spelling—intentional or not—might make toxic social media comments harder for AI detectors to spot.

The team put seven state-of-the-art hate speech detectors to the test. All of them failed.

Modern natural language processing techniques (NLP) can classify text based on individual characters, words or sentences. When faced with textual data that differs from that used in their training, they begin to fumble.

‘We inserted typos, changed word boundaries or added neutral words to the original hate speech. Removing spaces between words was the most powerful attack, and a combination of these methods was effective even against Google’s comment-ranking system Perspective,’ says Tommi Gröndahl, doctoral student at Aalto University.

Google Perspective ranks the ‘toxicity’ of comments using text analysis methods. In 2017, researchers from the University of Washington showed that Google Perspective can be fooled by introducing simple typos. Gröndahl and his colleagues have now found that Perspective has since become resilient to simple typos yet can still be fooled by other modifications such as removing spaces or adding innocuous words like ‘love’.

A sentence like ‘I hate you’ slipped through the sieve and became non-hateful when modified into ‘Ihateyou love’.

The researchers note that in different contexts the same utterance can be regarded either as hateful or merely offensive. Hate speech is subjective and context-specific, which renders text analysis techniques insufficient as stand-alone solutions.

The researchers recommend that more attention be paid to the quality of data sets used to train machine learning models—rather than refining the model design. The results indicate that character-based detection could be a viable way to improve current applications.

The study was carried out in collaboration with researchers from University of Padua in Italy. The results will be presented at the ACM AISec workshop in October.

The study is part of an ongoing project called Deception Detection via Text Analysis in the Secure Systems group at Aalto University.

Research article:

Tommi Gröndahl, Luca Pajola, Mika Juuti, Mauro Conti, N.Asokan:
All You Need is "Love": Evading Hate-speech Detection.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.09115

More information:

Tommi Gröndahl, Doctoral Candidate
Aalto University
Secure Systems group
tommi.grondahl@aalto.fi
tel. +358 400 426 523

N. Asokan, Professor
Aalto University
Secure Systems group
n.asokan@aalto.fi
tel. +358 50 483 6465

Assistant Professor Pekka Marttinen develops machine learning solutions to real-life problems (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Prediction models developed by Marttinen can be used to assess the new capitation model included in the health and social services reform.

What type of research do you do?

I study and develop machine-learning methods related to medicine and biology. I cooperate extensively with different partners, but at the same time, my method development work is independent.

Together with the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), I develop analytical methods for predicting different population groups’ long-term health. These statistical forecasting models can support the decision-making of the National Institute for Health and Welfare. The models can be useful when defining the capitation payments of the health and social services reform, that is, the amount of state compensation provided to suppliers of different health care services. The purpose of the model is to provide different population groups with the most appropriate resources.

The capitation fees are just one example of the interesting scientific problems that the new machine learning methods may help with. I aim for the most accurate forecasts, and I am also involved in the expert groups of the health and social services reform.

The predictive models I have created can also be used to identify risk groups in the population. They can be useful when assessing the need for screening the whole population or a large part of it, or monitoring the health of pregnant women suffering from gestational diabetes. The models may also provide individual and supportive recommendations on how to maintain optimal glucose levels.

I also make predictive models for plant breeding. They make use of data such as satellite images, weather, and individual properties of fields. The effects of hot summer seasons on yield and their potential impact on future cultivation is also a crucial topic to consider.

How did you become a researcher?

In 2003, I had a summer job at the Rolf Nevanlinna Institute of the University of Helsinki and worked in a biometry research group, doing research in applied mathematics and developing statistical methods for the problems in biology research.

I did my master's degree in maths and my dissertation in statistics, both at the University of Helsinki. Further studies in the Centre of Excellence in Biometry allowed me to continue with the topic of my master’s thesis.

After my dissertation, I managed to work for half a year at a consulting company when I heard about the position of a teaching researcher at Aalto University. A career as a researcher seemed interesting, fun and important—you get to educate future generations.

What are the highlights of your career so far?

There have been many highlights, often connected with the completion of something. After the last lecture of a course, I often take the rest of the day off to have time for myself. A similar special moment in the work of a researcher takes place when an article is sent for review or approved.

I spent the academic year 2013–2014 at Harvard, Boston, with my family. There I was able to focus on research, together with engaging topics and cooperation partners. It was a successful experience and brought us closer together as a family, too.

I also really enjoy communicating and brainstorming with students in peace. It is interesting to cooperate with different people from diverse backgrounds.

Every day can have special moments. I might listen to some music at work or write a diary in the evening before going to sleep.

What is the most essential characteristic of a researcher?

The answer depends on the field of research. My research is interdisciplinary and requires patience, perseverance and an ability to communicate with experts from different fields. A project may take longer than anyone would ever have guessed, but finally everything gets done.

What do you expect from the future?

I do my best at work, one day at a time. On the other hand, public examinations of my own students’ doctoral dissertations will certainly be special moments.

Further information:

Pekka Marttinen
Assistant Professor
Aalto University, Department of Computer Science
tel. +358 44 303 0349
pekka.marttinen@aalto.fi

Bodily sensations give rise to conscious feelings (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0000

A Finnish research group from the University of Turku, University of Tampere and Aalto University has mapped the organisation of human conscious feelings and found them to cluster into five major categories: positive emotions, negative emotions, cognitive functions, somatic states, and illnesses.

Humans constantly experience an ever-changing stream of subjective feelings that is only interrupted during sleep and deep unconsciousness. Finnish researchers show how the subjective feelings map into five major categories: positive emotions, negative emotions, cognitive functions, somatic states, and illnesses. All these feelings were imbued with strong bodily sensations.

‘These results show that conscious feelings stem from bodily feedback. Although consciousness emerges due to brain function and we experience our consciousness to be "housed" in the brain, bodily feedback contributes significantly to a wide variety of subjective feelings,’ explains Associate Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from Turku PET Centre.

According to the researchers, emotions vividly colour all our feelings as pleasant or unpleasant. It is possible that during evolution, consciousness has originally emerged to inform the organisms and others around about tissue damage and well-being. This development may have paved for the emergence of language, thinking and reasoning.

‘Subjective well-being is an important determinant of our prosperity, and pain and negative emotions are intimately linked with multiple somatic and psychological illnesses. Our findings help to understand how illnesses and bodily states in general influence our subjective well-being. Importantly, they also demonstrate the strong embodiment of cognitive and emotional states,’ adds Nummenmaa.

‘Having the map of conscious mental and bodily states will help us better characterise participants in our brain imaging studies. They go through a variety of experiences watching naturalistic videos or simply resting in the scanner while we measure their brain activity. By quantifying an individual’s bodily and mental load we can better discern similarities and differences between people and interpret our imaging results more precisely,’ says Enrico Glerean, co-author and postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University.

The study was conducted in the form of an online questionnaire in which more than 1,000 people participated. The participants first evaluated a total of 100 feeling states in terms of how much they are experienced in the body and mind, and how emotional and controllable they are. Next, they also evaluated how similar the feelings are with respect to each other, and whereabouts in the body they are felt.

‘We have obtained solid evidence that shows the body is involved in all types of cognitive and emotional functions. In other words, the human mind is strongly embodied,’ says Riitta Hari, co-author and Academician of Science at the Aalto University Department of Art.

The research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and the Academy of Finland.

The results were published 29 August 2018 by the National Academy of Sciences in its journal Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences of The United States of America (PNAS).

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1807390115

Figures: Map of subjective feelings and bodily maps of feelings.

More information:

Lauri Nummenmaa
Associate Professor, Turku PET Centre, University of Turku
p. +358 50 574 7933
lauri.nummenmaa@utu.fi

Enrico Glerean
Postdoctoral Researcher, Aalto University
enrico.glerean@aalto.fi

Riitta Hari
Academician of Science, Aalto University
riitta.hari@aalto.fi

Related:

University of Turku's press release

Previous research - Finnish research team reveals how emotions are mapped in the body

Participate in the research!

Top tools for artificial intelligence and IT are presented to hundreds of conference visitors at Aalto University in August (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0000

The tools have been used to improve the safety of drug tests for children, and to understand the cosmos through galaxy clusters.

In August, researchers from Aalto University's Department of Computer Science will host three conferences focusing on AI and ICT tools used in large corporations all over the world. Some of the methods have been used, for example, in Facebook's forecasting tool Prophet.

StanCon 2018, held 29–31 August, introduces cutting-edge methods and applications for statistical modelling—ranging from galaxy clusters to social media, brain research, and anthropology. In Finland, AI research is particularly strong in the field of medicine.

‘Statistical modeling can be used, for example, to improve the safety of drug testing in children. The time it takes for a child’s body to metabolise a drug depends not only on the weight of the child, but also on the ability of the liver to process the drug. The dosage size of the drug should, then, be reduced more than the weight alone would suggest. Modelling methods can be used to evaluate the effects of drugs on an individual level,’ says Professor Aki Vehtari of Aalto University.

One of the keynote speakers at the conference, Maggie Lieu, a researcher at the European Space Agency, uses statistical modeling to determine the mass of galaxy clusters.

“Hierarchical modeling has several advantages when there are millions of variables and a lot of noisy data in space. Using modelling, I can get meaningful results in up to ten minutes and study clusters of galaxies in one go instead of a single galaxy group at a time.”

ALGO Conference, 20–24 August, is an umbrella for the largest conferences in the field of algorithmics. During his talk on algorithms in bioinformatics, Professor Mihai Pop from the University of Maryland, discusses the use of algorithms in microbiological research.

‘Millions of good and bad intestinal bacteria have a very complicated, and partly unknown, way of interacting with each other. We have focused particularly on studying the intestinal bacteria of children in developing countries, but our algorithmic tools can also be used in cancer research.’

Children and young people were also one subject at the ICER 2018 conference, which took place on 12–16 August. The conference focused on the impact of new teaching methods and educational on learning outcomes, student behaviour, and motivation in the context of computing education.

Kirsti Lonka, Professor at the University of Helsinki, pointed out in her lecture that it is only with matters regarding digitalisation that students feel they are not getting adequate support from their teachers.

‘Especially if we want to motivate girls to study technology, we should try to benefit from the use of 3D models in teaching and other more concrete and inclusive ways of teaching, as well as learning in small groups where students can play on their own individual strengths,’ Lonka says.

Over 700 international researchers and business visitors are attending the three conferences.

More information:

StanCon 2018

ALGO2018

ICER 2018

Password managers vulnerable to insider hacking (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Communication channels between different parts and pieces of computer software are prone to security breaches. Anyone with access to a shared computer can attack or involuntarily subject it to security breaches.

Researchers from Aalto University and the University of Helsinki have found over ten computer security-critical applications that are vulnerable to insider attacks. Most of the vulnerabilities were found in password managers used by millions of people to store their login credentials. Several other applications were found to be similarly susceptible to attacks and breaches across the Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems.

Computer software often starts multiple processes to perform different tasks. For example, a password manager typically has two parts: a password vault and an extension to an internet browser, which both run as separate processes on the same computer.

To exchange data, these processes use a mechanism called inter-process communication (IPC), which remains within the confines of the computer and does not send information to an outside network. For this reason, IPC has traditionally been considered secure. However, the software needs to protect its internal communication from other processes running on the same computer. Otherwise, malicious processes started by other users could access the data in the IPC communication channel.

‘Many security-critical applications, including several password managers, do not properly protect the IPC channel. This means that other users’ processes running on a shared computer may access the communication channel and potentially steal users’ credentials,’ explains Thanh Bui, a doctoral candidate at Aalto University.

While PCs are often thought to be personal, it is not uncommon that several people have access to the same machine. Large companies typically have a centralized identity and access management system that allows employees to log into any company computer. In these scenarios, it is possible for anyone in the company to launch attacks. An attacker can also log in to the computer as a guest or connect remotely, if these features are enabled.

‘The number of vulnerable applications shows that software developers often overlook the security problems related to inter-process communication. Developers may not understand the security properties of different IPC methods, or they place too much trust in software and applications that run locally. Both explanations are worrisome,’ says Markku Antikainen, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki.

Following responsible disclosure, the researchers have reported the detected vulnerabilities to the respective vendors, which have taken steps to prevent the attacks. The research was done partly in co-operation with F-Secure, a Finnish cyber-security company.

The research will be presented at the DEFCON security conference on August 12, 2018, and at the Usenix Security conference on August 17, 2018.

The publication is available directly from the authors and will be online after the Usenix conference at https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentation/bui.

More information

Thanh Bui, Doctoral Candidate
Aalto University
tel. +358 50 4658007
thanh.bui@aalto.fi

Markku Antikainen, Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Helsinki
tel. +358 50 3396900
markku.antikainen@helsinki.fi

Great job opportunities for post docs and doctoral students at the Department of Computer Science and FCAI - Apply Now! (Aalto CS News)

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Applications are invited for multiple interesting positions for post docs and doctoral students at the Department of Computer Science and FCAI. Apply Now!

Helsinki ICT Network: Positions for exceptional doctoral candidates

The Helsinki Doctoral Education Network in Information and Communications Technology (HICT) is a joint initiative by Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, the two leading universities within this area in Finland. The participating units of HICT have currently funding available for exceptionally qualified doctoral students in multiple research fields around ICT. Apply by 12th August!

Read more information at: https://www.hict.fi/autumn_2018

Post Doc and doctoral student positions in machine learning

Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI; http://fcai.fi) is looking for exceptional doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers to tackle complex and exciting problems in the field of machine learning. Come and join us to create the next generation of AI that is data-efficient, trustworthy and understandable!

Post doc applications: We will start processing the applications on August 12th, 2018 so please apply quickly. Doctoral students applications: Apply by 12th August!

Participate in an online game experiment at Aalto University on August 15th (Aalto CS News)

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 21:00:00 +0000

The aim of the vast research project is to create a simulator to anticipate human behavior in socioeconomic crises or to develop avatars of artificial intelligence.

Department of Computer Science is participating in IBSEN, a project funded by Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation Programme. The goal of the IBSEN project is to understand the behavior of people on an individual level, especially when they are connected by new technologies like mobile telephones or social networks.

With this information, researchers will be able to create a simulator of human behavior. This technology could be applied to anticipate behavior in socioeconomic crises, create more human-like robots or develop avatars of artificial intelligence which are almost indistinguishable from those that represent people.

Participate in IBSEN

Volunteers are needed for an online game experiment at Aalto University on August 15th, 2018. The volunteers will participate in different trials of an online game to be played on desktop computers. The estimated time for the whole experiment is around 4 hours beginning at 4 pm.

Volunteers will receive 2 movie ticket for attendance.

To join, send an email to daniel.monsivais-velazquez@aalto.fi, with the subject line: "Want to join", and you will be contacted before the experiment.

Volunteers will be briefed before the game.

Further information:

Experiment description

Speed up solving complex problems: be lazy and only work crucial tasks (Aalto CS News)

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 21:00:00 +0000

A new improvement to a programming technique called ‘lazy grounding’ could solve hard-set and complex issues in freight logistics, routing and power grids by drastically reducing computation times.

A new approach to ‘lazy grounding’ is set to make a viable and attractive solution for many fields of industry and large multi-nationals dealing with complex systems. Antonius Weinzierl of Aalto University and Bart Bogaerts from KU Leuven have just presented their paper at one of the most renowned scientific conferences on artificial intelligence, IJCAI-ECAI-18 in Stockholm.

For tasks with hundreds of parameters and thousands of possible combinations, solutions have long required time and effort. For example, when a freight train engine breaks down, the train operator is left with the challenge of finding a replacement engine that can pull the train’s weight and is compatible with all kinds of requirements, like the track’s signaling system, power grid, and track gauge. Maybe the operator has a suitable engine available, but the solution may only become clear after shuffling around several engines. In human hands, this process can take hours.

‘Quickly finding a replacement saves resources across the board, because larger delays incur penalties and may even bring business to a halt,’ says postdoctoral researcher Weinzierl.

Yet even state-of-the-art computational methods for solving these kinds of problems have met their limits in industry. Current methods of searching for solutions that are both absolutely correct and viable require more memory than is available in today’s computers. A recent method to ‘ground’ the computation in a way that only the most urgent and relevant tasks are taken care of—hence the laziness—frees up memory, but may get stuck in searching for a solution and suddenly require an unreasonable amount of time.

To avoid such jams and tackle the root issue of memory consumption, the researchers have suggested a new way to pinpoint the small subset of decisions that actually contribute to a wrong turn somewhere down the line—and ignore the rest.

‘It’s similar to finding your way out of a labyrinth, with or without a map. Without one, you have to explore every path and corner to find the exit. Current programmes solve complex tasks like this by first drawing a complete map of the labyrinth and only then starting to work their way out,’ explains Weinzierl.

But drawing the whole map takes up a lot of memory. Lazy grounding would let you navigate without a map altogether, but when you eventually wind up lost, having the right part of the map would come in handy to not get stuck.

‘Our approach essentially draws a local part of the map on demand and allows you to pinpoint where exactly the initial wrong turn was and how to get straight back on track,’ Weinzierl says.

The paper was presented on 18 July 2018 at IJCAI-ECAI-18 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Link to publication:

Bart Bogaerts and Antonius Weinzierl: Exploiting Justifications for Lazy Grounding of Answer Set Programs, Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Main track. Pages 1737-1745.

https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2018/240

More information:

Antonius Weinzierl, Postdoctoral Researcher
antonius.weinzierl@aalto.fi
tel. +358 50 4346805

Aalto maintains strong position in prestigious ShanghaiRankings (Aalto CS News)

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Two Aalto fields leap forward, with altogether 8 ranking in the top 100 worldwide

Aalto University has once again seen excellent performance in the one of the world’s most respected university rankings, the ShanghaiRanking Global Ranking of Academic Subjects.

Aalto’s top ranking field according to the 2018 results is Telecommunication Engineering, which placed 28th in the world. Two fields from the Aalto School of Business saw the biggest gains this year: Business Administration jumped up to 34^th place from last year’s range of 51-75 and Management moved from 49^th position to 36^th.

Several other fields at Aalto also ranked in the top 100. Placing between spots 51-75 were Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Remote Sensing, and Mining and Mineral Engineering. The subject of Transportation Science and Technology maintained its place in the 76-100 range.

The annual ShanghaiRankings, first released in 2009, evaluate universities in 54 subjects across the natural sciences, engineering, as well as life, medical and social sciences. The rankings do not assess subjects related to art and design. In total, over 4000 universities were evaluated in 2018.

ShanghaiRankings

Researchers propose new solutions to alleviate hostility on social media (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Disputes could be alleviated in arenas where people voicing incendiary opinions would have to deal with the emotions and reactions of a variety of readers, including their own near and dears.

Arguments and the echo chambers recycling strong opinions on social media are actively studied all over the world. Many researchers have suggested that inciting hatred and hostility between extreme opposites on an issue could be alleviated by wide-ranging content recommendation across hard-set divides. This way, people could be exposed to content and perspectives that differ from their own fixed opinions.

A joint research effort of Aalto University, University of Helsinki and Syracuse University challenges the approach that has attracted a great deal of attention. The researchers analysed approximately 50 000 messages from a total of ten Finnish Facebook groups, half of which had a positive stance towards immigration and the other half were strongly against it. Only two per cent of the links shared in the opposed groups were the same; consequently, the groups do not consume the same content, save only a few exceptions.

After this network analysis, they took a more detailed look at approximately 1 000 comments submitted to the few pieces of content that were shared on both sides. The qualitative analysis showed that Facebook as a platform does not encourage users to encounter others and their opinions, even though in principle it provides an arena for open debate.

‘The original content may be a neutral piece of news, but the person sharing it sets it against their own opinion. At the same time, those who disagree may be negatively labelled – and the framing steers the debate onwards. This happens equally in groups that are in favour of immigration and against it. Therefore, we do not believe that content recommendation as such can be the solution, but we need new approaches,’ says Salla-Maaria Laaksonen, researcher at the University of Helsinki.

Based on the research carried out in the field, the team have come up with new solutions to alleviate hostile echo chambers.

‘We could create platforms and groups that highlight the importance of listening and reflecting upon the opinions of others. The person expressing an opinion would then be forced to face the readers' emotional reactions. Instead of judging others, people sharing content would have the opportunity to contemplate what they have said and how it affects others,’ Aalto University researcher Matti Nelimarkka explains.

‘One possible factor explaining and intensifying the polarisation of opinions and attacks against other individuals is the circle of silence. It is created when, for example, a person in favour of immigration is afraid to discuss the possible effects that reception centres may have on communities that host them. The debate is bigoted and aggressive on both sides to such an extent that participants are afraid to voice differing opinions,’ says Nelimarkka.

Researchers are also looking into the possibility of using the social relationships of individuals in content recommendation. For example, an algorithm could recommend a discussion in which a relative or a friend is involved. A person sharing hostile or bigoted content would then be exposed to differing perceptions of people they know, and the dispute would no longer take place just between strangers.

‘Our ideas still require further development so that we can guarantee that the recommendation algorithm does inflict any harm to people’s relationships and that the algorithm can recommend mind-opening content regardless of where a person might stand on a given issue,’ Nelimarkka notes.

Research article: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3196764

Read more about research done on echo chambers in social media done at Aalto University:

Conflicting views on social media balanced by an algorithm
http://www.aalto.fi/en/current/news/2017-12-05-012/

2.7 billion tweets confirm: echo chambers in Twitter are very real
http://www.aalto.fi/en/current/news/2018-04-24

More information:
Matti Nelimarkka
Aalto University
matti.nelimarkka@aalto.fi
tel. +358 50 52 75 920

Students raised half a million euros for a new professor of their own (Aalto CS News)

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:00:00 +0000

The Information Networks programme at Aalto University will have a new Professor of Practice, Dr. Risto Sarvas.

The student guild Athene and their sponsor association Athene Angels together with Aalto University raised €500,000 in funds to establish a new professorship for the programme. The students were also involved in making the final choice of the new professor.

The new Professor of Practice will strengthen the cooperation of Aalto University’s teaching, companies and public organisations. The candidates were required to show not only acumen in teaching and research but also considerable experience outside academia in business. Previously, Risto Sarvas has worked as Head of Design at Futurice and as an Adjunct Professor at Aalto University. He has also received the Teacher of the Year Award at Aalto University School of Science in 2016.

In 1999, the Information Networks programme was launched to educate new types of professionals to bridge the gaps between business, digital technology, design, and users. The programme is led in close collaboration between Aalto University Department of Industrial Engineering and Management and the Department of Computer Science.

Sarvas’ field will comprise, both in terms of teaching and research, digital service design, digital platforms, and the use of knowledge in digital business networks.

The funds for the professorship came from the joint effort of Aalto University, the student guild Athene, and their sponsor association Athene Angels. They amassed a total of €500,000 in donations from major ICT, investment and management consulting companies who wished to invest in the education Information Networks provides. One of the donors was Futurice, the digital design and development company in which Sarvas has worked for seven years.

‘My career goal has always been to work at the interface of technology and society. I strongly feel that designers, engineers and business people should be conscious of the ethical and societal decisions they make in creating new technology and business,’ says Sarvas.

‘Information networks students clearly have a flavour of their own in building the future. They are open and outgoing, and they have a holistic perspective on business, technology, and design. I see them as society’s change agents who lead and facilitate us through complex challenges,’ he adds.

Students in the programme embrace Sarvas’ appointment. They both share the goal of strengthening the collaboration and personal networks between academia and business in using real cases and problems in joint projects.

’Risto wants our know-how and skills to have a clear brand in the eyes of employers, current students and prospective new students applying for our programme. We trust that Risto will provide the finishing touches our cross-disciplinary education needs to become an even more concise whole,’ recounts Joel Lappalainen, chair of the student guild Athene, the feedback on Sarvas’ appointment collected from students in the programme.

’Risto has the knack for educating ethically and socially conscious designers for digital services. He genuinely cares about his students and encourages us to push the envelope while constantly looking to improve his own teaching,’ students extol in their feedback.

Companies and organisations who donated for the professorship: Accenture, Accountor, CapMan, Boston Consulting Group, The City of Espoo, Futurice, Inventure, KPMG, Reaktor, Sofigate and Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation.

More information:
Risto Sarvas, Professor of Practice
Aalto University
risto.sarvas@aalto.fi

Patient experiences of families with children to improve hospital activities (Aalto CS News)

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Patient experiences of children and families at three university hospitals, as well as using patient feedback in developing hospital activities have been examined in a large research collaboration.

The three-year Lapsus research project has examined the experiences that child patients and their families have had of hospital visits, treatment, and services, as well as everyday experiences of coping with illness in the children's clinics of the university hospitals of Helsinki, Oulu, and Turku. The results have helped in the planning of activities and facilities of the New Children's Hospital in Helsinki.

‘The new methods and the experiences from the study help us understand what kinds of things are important for children and families in a hospital. The study has been an excellent opportunity for making the voices of children and families heard and to learn how information on their experiences can be collected and utilised in the development of the activities of a children's hospital and in the planning of new hospitals,’ says Pekka Lahdenne, Head of Functional Planning of the New Children's Hospital.

‘The patient experiences of children, young people, and their parents have been studied rather scarcely. Patient experience is a multidimensional concept and it can be measured from many different angles: the professional skills and friendliness of staff, smoothness of diagnosis and decision making, the quality of instructions given, confidence in the success of treatment, and strain imposed on everyday life caused by the disease,’ says Aalto University postdoctoral researcher Johanna Kaipio, director of the Lapsus research project.

Patient experience is a series of encounters

One part-study of the project involves examining the connections between different factors to seek a broader picture of the entirety or "ecosystem" of patient experience. The way the patient and the family has experienced the treatment is rarely based exclusively on an individual encounter in a hospital. The experience is based rather on contacts with many different actors in health care, for instance, those involved in social support and subsistence and the support networks provided by friends and families.

‘A successful patient experience is built on smooth and unified flows of information among actors,’ Kaipio says.

Children and young people do not see their lives through illness

The patient stories of children and young people were collected in photographs and video diaries. Children and young people do not experience their lives through the disease. Instead, they live in the moment and, even when hospitalised, see their normal everyday lives, such as play and contacts with friends, as important. It is rather parents who reflect the impact of the disease more broadly and further into the future.

Positive aspects displayed in patients’ photos at the day hospital and rehabilitation unit of the HUS Children's Hospital include hospital staff and personal nurses, as well as toys, playing, digital equipment as well as easy and painless procedures. Negative experiences in the photos were invasive procedures as well as a lack of privacy and boring rooms. Positive experiences depicted in the video diaries of young people included the continuity of treatment, holistic encounters with children, and the non-invasive treatments.

Systematic feedback through electronic questionnaires

In the Lapsus project, a patient experience questionnaire was developed as a tool for collecting feedback. Separate questionnaires were designed for children and parents and guardians for wards and doctors' offices. The ward questionnaire had five statements of experience, and the questionnaire for the doctor's offices had eight. The statements concerned how the treatments were arranged, for instance the facilities and the instructions that were given, returning home from the hospital, how unhurried the staff members were, the parent's attitude toward disease and how burdensome it was seen to be, and the support and arrangements that were provided for day-to-day life.

‘In the New Children's Hospital feedback from patients will be collected digitally. We have established a versatile operating model for the collection of patient feedback. It will enable the development of continuous activity and the best possible patient experience for children and their families,’ Pekka Lahdenne says.

The Lapsus research project is funded by Business Finland and is closely linked with the functional development of the New Children's Hospital. Participating members in the research were Aalto University and the Tampere University of Technology as well as the children's wards of the university hospitals in Helsinki, Turku, and Oulu.

More information:
Johanna Kaipio, postdoctoral researcher
Aalto University
Lapsus Project Manager
tel. +358 50 593 6822
johanna.kaipio@aalto.fi

Pekka Lahdenne, Associate Professor, pediatrics
Helsinki University Hospital
Head of Functional Planning of the New Children's Hospital
tel. +358 50 428 5521
pekka.lahdenne@hus.fi

Finnish Centre of Artificial Intelligence FCAI and VTT join forces (Aalto CS News)

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT will join Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI launched by Aalto University and the University of Helsinki as a third founding member.

VTT will bring their strong industry networks and their know-how in applied technology to the FCAI community. Their help will enforce FCAI’s ability to take the top research in both founding universities to far-ranging and efficient use in companies, public organisations and society at large.

FCAI promotes high-quality research and education on artificial intelligence in Finland and the applicability of AI to benefit companies and society. VTT will expand FCAI’s ability to speed up the necessary renewal and competitiveness of Finnish industry through AI-based innovations.

FCAI strives to make the new generation of AI methods a reality: create AIs that are understandable, trustworthy, and data-efficient. FCAI's goal is to expand into a national network of universities, companies and research institutions who will lay the groundwork for Finland to become a global leader in AI research and applications.

Growth in any strand of industry depends on the ability to make use of cutting-edge technology. Artificial intelligence is the key leverage here.

‘Our vision is to bring our high-class research in several strands of artificial intelligence to benefit people's every-day lives, companies and public bodies. FCAI’s impact is a potent mixture of research, a network of startups, doctoral education and competence building in AI, new innovative products and services, and smart experiments in public administration,’ says Head of FCAI, Academy Professor Samuel Kaski.

‘The single most significant growth factor now is applying artificial intelligence and ICT in general. For citizens, new innovations and solutions will bring a change in work content, professional skills, and the services society provides. AI will be able to make, for instance, medical care more efficient and personalised,’ says Tua Huomo, Executive Vice President at VTT.

FCAI is building a national hub of universities, research institutes, industry and the private sector and public organisations with strong international networks. The FCAI community is constantly expanding with new memberships and projects.

More information:
Samuel Kaski
Head of FCAI
Academy Professor, Aalto University
firstname.lastname@aalto.fi
tel. +358 50 305 8694

Tua Huomo
Executive Vice President
VTT
tua.huomo@vtt.fi
tel. +358 40 564 4146

Call a Researcher! a new way for research to have societal impact (Aalto CS News)

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Fifteen researchers offered their knowledge on digitalization through free one hour Skype discussions.

Effective distribution and use of research knowledge is a vital part of the third function of universities: societal impact. Digital Disruption of Industry research consortium, funded by the Strategic Research Council and led by Aalto University, offered its researchers’ expertise to citizens, media and companies in a new form through one hour free Skype discussions in April 2018.

Fifteen researchers had dialogue with 65 persons during one week. The participants were from startups, industrial companies, the Finnish Parliament and EU, ministries, unions, PR agencies, banks, universities and a county. Discussion topics included for example artificial intelligence and ethics, platform economy, ecosystems, blockchains and data sharing.

'The discussions were very successful. We discussed on concrete challenges and problems of different companies and communities related to a certain subtopic of digitalization. It was very interesting to note that just by summarizing the topic and discussing the fundamentals of it was much appreciated and beneficial for the caller in understanding the problematics and in drafting a solution. The dialogues were truly beneficial also for the researcher – for me they gave motivation and new ideas for future research', tells Kimmo Karhu, post-doctoral researcher at Aalto University.

Call a Researcher! made contacting easy and the participants wished for the service to continue

'Boosting innovation requires new modes of operation and being ready to just plunge in. When I saw the Call a Researcher! campaign on Twitter I immediately booked my slot', says Maria Rautavirta, Senior Engineer at the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications. The discussion reassured her on the questions to be tackled in the digital transformation. She also got reassurance that the ministry is focusing on the right topics and especially on the people in the midst of this transformation. 'I hope there would be more such opportunities to easily contact researchers. I would also like to see short pitches of broad topics around digitalization', explains Rautavirta.

Jussi Simolin from Innoduel is a start-up entrepreneur developing a product that helps leaders to lead better, or in turns helps people to participate in decision making. 'For our marketing we need scientific facts. We need to show evidence to our target customers, the leaders, that soft things like engagement, listening to employees and inclusion are beneficial to business as well. And this is where science comes handy, also leaders believe in science, typically', says Simolin.

Jussi Simolin was thrilled to see Aalto Start-up Center tweet about this opportunity. He rushed into the site and after a very difficult decision making process decided to book one hour time slot from a researcher at Lappeenranta University of Technology LUT. 'The whole process was so easy and we managed to have great chats and I really felt that the researcher had prepared things for me. It was a dialogue that we continued in another call! This service is just what I need as a start-up entrepreneur. I do not need facilities or tools or anything. I need access to people that can talk with me and give me some directions. I love this service!', he comments.

Timo Honkanen from Vaisala says that the discussion he had was really fruitful. He got good views and experience, not just from an academic perspective. 'Well spent hour. I hope this becomes a regular service!', says Honkanen.

The Digital Disruption of Industry research consortium will organise another Call a Researcher! week next autumn.

Thank you to everyone who participated!

The Digital Disruption of Industry research consortium studies the impacts of digitalization to the Finnish industry and society at large. The consortium has more than 40 researchers in five organisations – Aalto University, ETLA, Lappeenranta University of Technology, University of Turku and VTT Technical Research Center of Finland. It is funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland. More information ddi.aalto.fi

Agile security for cloud systems? Moti Yung to give a HAIC Talk at Aalto (Aalto CS News)

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 21:00:00 +0000

Renowned security and privacy scientist and cryptographer Moti Yung will visit Aalto University, hosted by the Helsinki-Aalto Center for Information Security (HAIC) to give a public lecture on 19 June.

Yung is particularly known for coining the term ‘cryptovirology’ and the principles behind it. At his HAIC Talk he will explain how, in ‘the cloud era’, software design and security tool development should be able to keep up with the constantly evolving ecosystem and take note of how cloud systems keep evolving.

Adhering to what he calls “agile principles” could also protect cloud systems from attacks and breaches.

‘In an environment where software development, updates and projects are always ongoing, also the cryptography and security designer should be in a state of adaptation to the system's evolution. I will demonstrate this in my talk based on a heavily-used real-world application,’ says Yung, referring to Google’s Advertisement Exchange, which supports the company’s multi-billion-dollar digital advertising.

Designing security tools and cryptographic solutions with the ever-extending scope and inevitable scaling up of the cloud system – such as Google’s Advertisement Exchange, Yung’s focus point in the upcoming talk – would be a way to avoid overly complex changes and loads of development overhead later on.

Yung finds an analogy of the ‘agility principle’ even for keeping every-day users safe from ransomware and all other kinds of attacks.

‘The two things people often think of only as disturbances – systems updates and backups – are in fact most essential! If everyone took care of them frequently, the window of opportunity for attackers would narrow considerably,’ reminds Yung.

Yung’s work on ransomware – the hijacking of systems or data from users or organisations and issuing demands for ransom for releasing the data – also becomes increasingly relevant with the current internet of things trend. The ‘things’ will enable new kinds of security breaches and attacks and prevention tactics need to be planned well in advance.

‘The merging of computing and physical devices will lead to new attacks where ransomware will be replaced by physical consequences.’

‘Any element of the new IoT systems will be a target, and there is not enough investment in their security. Ransomware could cause a man-made disaster if we do not secure the system-level infrastructure,’ believes Yung.

He also cautions that artificial intelligence applied without safety and security in mind will lead to attacks.

Moti Yung’s HAIC Talk The Advertisement Exchange: How to Develop Agile Cryptographic Support for an Evolving Ecosystem?, 19 June at Dipoli (Lumituuli) at 6 PM:
http://www.aalto.fi/en/current/events/2018-05-07-008

The talk is open for everyone, but please sign up in advance here:
https://haic-talks.eventbrite.com