News

The semantic portal - Finnish Museum on the Semantic Web was presented and its pilot version was opened on the public web at the National Museum in Helsinki. The portal is a result of a research and development project carried out at Helsinki University Computer Science Department and HIIT. More information at project's website.

The Academy of Finland awarded HIIT a grant of 50,000€ from its Infrastructure Program 2004 for the acquisition of a grid-type computational server, mainly needed for research in probabilistic modelling in the Complex System Computation Group led by professor Henry Tirri. The computational server will find immediate use in Next Generation Search project cluster of HIIT, but is likely to be used also in other research acvitities of HIIT involving intensive computation.

The kick-off meeting of the project ALVIS: Superpeer Semantic Search Engine was held in Paris. The 3-year project is funded by the European Union in the IST priority the 6th Framework Program; it was originally submitted in the first call of the IST priority. The project belongs to the Future Search cluster of projects, all aimed at building a next-generation Internet search engine. HIIT coordinates the joint research effort involving nine partners from Europe and also Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. ALVIS is led by professor Henry Tirri.

The Academy of Finland awarded 4-year funding for the project DRAMA: Scenario Methods for User Centric Product Concept Development from its Industrial Design Programme. The project will study how the methods of narrative theatre can be applied to study interactively scenarios embodying the use of technology in a future setting. It will be executed in co-operation with the dramaturgy unit of the Stadia Polytechnic. The project will be led by professor Martti Mäntylä.

The first HIIT Scientific Advisory Board meeting was held in Deptartment of Computer Science of the University of Helsinki and Advanved Research Unit premises at the High Tech Center. The objective of the meeting was to present HIIT's longer-term plans and to provide a forum for their critical evaluation.

At the closing of the 2nd Call of the IST Programme of the European Union, HIIT researchers participated in the submission of four proposals (two Integrated Projects, one STREP, and one Network of Excellence).

Mr. Kenji Kuroda, General manager, Planning & Administration Department, Corporate R&D, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and Mr. Ryugo Nishii, President, Information Technology Centre Europe B. V., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, visited HIIT. The discussion focused on industry-academia interface and HIIT's experience on their arrangement. [picture]

The ARU Research Portfolio 2004 seminar was held at the High Tech Center. The seminar presented project ideas to be developed further for submission to various funding organisations during rest of 2003.

The First International Mobile IPR Workshop: Rights Management of Information Products on the Mobile Internet was held in Helsinki on August 27-28, 2003. Keynote speakers of the event included Professor Hal Varian (UC Berkeley, USA) and Professor Ross Anderson (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom). The workshop was organised by HIIT with support of TEKES through the Mobile IPR project. Proceedings of the event are available in the report series of HIIT.

The 3rd Helsinki-Berkeley Summer School on Telecommunications Software Architectures organized by HIIT and the University of California at Berkeley was held in Berkeley, California on August 18-20. Main organisers of the Summer School were Professor Kimmo Raatikainen and Professor Randy Katz.