News

HIIT submitted three proposals for the “Counterstream projects” call of TEKES’ NETS program. If funded, these smallish projects will launch in during the Summer 2002. The call is likely to be quite competitive.

HIIT submitted three preproposals for evaluation by the Proactive Computing program of the Academy of Finland. Selected teams will be invited to submit full proposals in August, 2002. If funded, these projects will launch in January 2003.

Prof. George Metakides, Director, Essential Information Society Technologies and Infrastructures, Directorate-General Information Society, European Commission, visited HIIT. A seminar covering selected HIIT research activities and a presentation of Prof. Metakides was arranged.

Two new positions were opened for applications at HIIT. The senior researcher level Research Coordinator will be mainly responsible for coordinating international research, particularly EU-funded activities. The Project Secretary will assist the Research Coordinator and also individual projects. The call of applications closes on April 4, 2002.

The HIIT EU info page was added to HIIT WWW, explaining HIIT’s position regarding the sixth Framework Programme, expected to launch in November 2002.

TEKES awarded funding for the project DE Core: Structures of Mobile Digital Economy. The project will focus on the technical, economic, and legal fundamentals of digital markets and their possible future evolution. The project will involve co-operation with the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) at the University of California at Berkeley, where the project will place one researcher starting from August, 2002. Dr. Jukka Kemppinen and Dr. Martti Mäntylä will lead the project jointly.

On the same date, TEKES also awarded funding for the project Fuego Core: Middleware for Mobile Wireless Internet led by Prof. Kimmo Raatikainen of the University of Helsinki. The project studies middleware issues arising in the Mobile Internet, and aims at influencing the standardization of these technologies through IETF and W3C. Part of the work will be carried out in co-operation with the research group of Prof. Randy Katz at the Computer Science Division of the University of California at Berkeley.

TEKES awarded first year funding for the Semantic Web project of the Media Convergence Program. The project will focus on studying semantic Web technologies in two prime areas: semantic service catalogues and semantic data storage. Prof. Eero Hyvönen of the University of Helsinki leads the project.

TEKES awarded two-year funding 2002-2003 for the project The Welfare of Nations. The project will study the interaction of technology, economy, and society through a comparative investigation of three successful information societies: Silicon Valley, Singapore, and Finland. The project will be carried out in close co-operation with the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at University of California, Berkeley. The project is led by Dr. Jukka Kemppinen jointly with Dr. Pekka Himanen.

The Basic Research Unit of HIIT organised jointly with the Laboratory of Theoretical Computer Science of HUT a seminar on Energy-Constrained Computation. Speakers included Heikki Mannila (HIIT/BRU), Markku Åberg (VTT), Patrik Floréen (UH) and Pekka Orponen (HUT).