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TUCS Newsletter 27.6.2014

Content of the newsletter

TUCS activities

New courses

Announcements

Latest publications at TUCS

TUCS Staff wishes everyone relaxing and sunny summer holidays!

TUCS activities

TUCS Research Programme activities

Third call for TUCS travel grants

The third and final call for the TUSC travel grants during 2014 is underway. The  deadline for applications is Tuesday 30th September and the applicants will be informed of decisions by Tue 7th October.

 

Applications should be submitted to (tucs@abo.fi) according to the guidelines at http://tucs.fi/education/information-students/travelling-instructions-phd-students/ before the deadline 30.9.2014, 16.00 pm.

 

Any applications arriving after the deadline will automatically be moved to next year.

TUCS PhD Student Toolkit

Turku Centre for Computer Science (TUCS) is hosting this fall a course on practical aspects of research and the academic vs. enterprise R&D.

“TUCS PhD Student Toolkit” is a graduate course targeted for doctoral students and researchers. The aim of the course is to provide an intensive information package for successful PhD studies, research funding possibilities, innovation processes, communication skills and R&D activities in both academia and business environment. The course language is English.

Place: TBA

Credits: 1cr

Registration: By email to Outi Tuohi (otuohi@abo.fi) by Monday 1st September 2014

Course programme:      

http://tucs.fi/news/article/tucsphdstudenttoolkit2014.php

TUCS GP PhD defences

On Monday, July 28th, TUCS GP Student Ville Salo presents his Doctoral thesis ”Subshifts with Simple Cellular Automata” for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Salo is Enrico Formenti, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France.

Time: 12 noon

Place: Auditorium Cal 1, Calonia

On Thursday, August 7th, TUCS GP Student Jari Björne presents his Doctoral thesis ”Biomedical Event Extraction with Machine Learning” for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Björne is Professor Pierre Zweigenbaum, University of Paris, France. Professor Tapio Salakoski will act as a custos at this public defence.

On Friday, August 15th, TUCS GP Student Johan Ersfolk presents his Doctoral thesis ”Scheduling Dynamic Dataflow Graphs with Model Checking” for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Ersfolk is Associate Professor Stavros Tripakis, Aalto University. Professor Johan Lilius will act as a custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon

Place: Auditorium Gamma, ICT Building

New courses

New INFORTE courses

Digital Enterprise Engineering

August 26th  – 27th

Tampere

Speaker:

Professor Henderik A. Proper (University of Njimegen, The Netherlands)

Organizers:

Postdoctoral researcher Mirja Pulkkinen (University of Jyväskylä)

Professor Mikko Ruohonen (University of Tampere)

 

Registration closing date: August 15th

Registration and more information: http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/digital_enterprise_engineering

 

Cyber Security

September 2nd – 3rd

Jyväskylä

Speakers:

Professor Dipankar Dasgupta (University of Memphis, USA)

Professor John R. Williams (MIT, USA)

Organizers:

Professor Jari Veijalainen (University of Jyväskylä)

 

Registration closing date: August 25th

Registration and more information: http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/cyber_security

 

eHealth

September 25th – 26th

Turku

Speakers:

Professor Stefan Klein (University of Münster, Germany)

Assistant professor Tobias Mettler (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)

Professor Reima Suomi (University of Turku)

Organizer:

Professor Reima Suomi (University of Turku)

 

Registration: August 1st – September 15th

Registration and more information: http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/eHealth

 

 

Qualitative Research Methods in Information Systems

October 13th – 14th

Jyväskylä

Speaker:

Professor Michael D. Myers (University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand)

Organizer:

Professor Tuure Tuunanen (University of Jyväskylä)

 

Registration: August 1st – October 1st

Registration and more information: http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/qualitative_research_methods

 

Please, see all detailed programs in: http://inforte.jyu.fi/

Participating in all seminars and workshops is free of charge for PhD students and staff members working in participating university departments. Check out the member list when registering: www.inforte.fi/participate

Courses on transferable skills at University of Turku

http://www.utu.fi/fi/Tutkimus/tutkijakoulu/courses/Sivut/home.aspx

Announcements

Google’s Anita Borg Scholarship to TUCS GP student Natalia Diaz Rodriguez

Natalia Diaz, doctoral candidate at the Department of Information Technologies at Åbo Akademi University has recieved the 2014 Google Anita Borg Scholarship. The scholarship was first launched in 2004 when a group of Googlers in North America decided to establish a program that would honor the work of their friend and colleague Dr. Anita Borg. In 2007, the scholarship expanded to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Read more here: http://www.abo.fi/public/News/Item/item/8657

HPY Research Foundation

 

HPY Research Foundation 2014 grants are open for applications. The foundation supports research studies of telecommunications technology, studies closely related to telecommunications business or the use of telecommunications.. Research studies should be in the areas of technological, economical or behavioural sciences and the level of post-graduate studies aiming to doctoral thesis or higher level studies.

 

The board of the Foundations selects the applicants who will be awarded and only the awarded applicants are notified by a letter later in the autumn.

 

Instructions for application:

http://corporate.elisa.com/corporate-responsibility/hpy-research-foundation/instructions-for-application/

Call for papers: System Management for Energy Efficient Parallel Applications and Platforms

Special session in 23rd Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, and Network-Based Processing (PDP 2015), http://www.pdp2015.org/specialsessions/sysmng/index.html

4th - 6th March 2015, Turku, Finland

This special session aims at gathering researchers working in the broad areas of energy-efficient computing and communication systems. This session seeks submissions addressing the different aspects of system management for energy efficient parallel applications and platforms. Emphasis is given to approaches and analyses targeting real-world energy-efficient system implementations as well as novel approaches to energy-efficient design. Authors are invited to submit high quality papers representing original work from both the academia and industry in (but not limited to) the following topics:

This special session is organized in cooperation with the COST Action 1305, the Network for Sustainable Ultrascale Computing (NESUS - http://www.nesus.eu).

Important dates

Paper submission: 25st August 2014

Acceptance notification: 25th Oct 2014

Camera ready due: 10th Nov 2014

Conference: 4th - 6th Mar 2015

Submission guidelines

Prospective authors should submit a full paper not exceeding 8 pages in the IEEE Conference proceedings format (IEEEtran, double-column, 10pt). Double-bind review: the first page of the paper should contain only the title and abstract; in the reference list, references to the authors’ own work should appear as "omitted for blind review" entries. Manuscript submission

Double-bind review: the paper should not contain authors names and affiliations; in the reference list, references to the authors' own work entries should be substituted with the string "omitted for blind review”.

Publication

Proceedings will be published by IEEE Computer Society in the same volume of the main track. Authors of accepted papers are expected to register and present their papers at the Conference. Conference proceedings will be indexed, among others, by IEEE explore, DBLP, Scopus ScienceDirect, and ISI Web of Knowledge.

Organizers and special session chairs:

Winners of the smart spaces idea challenge

Ten teams from all over Europe gathered on June 3 to the Open Innovation House in Espoo, Finland, for the final pitches in the Smart Spaces Idea Challenge competition. The finalists' business ideas were all different making it hard for the jury, lead by Petri Liuha who leads Smart Spaces innovation area, to reach their decision.

 

And the WINNERS are: 1st place Homey from the Netherlands, 2nd place Qgo from Austria and 3rd place Avansera from Finland.

Read more here: http://www.eitictlabs.eu/news-events/news/article/six-winners-in-eit-ict-labs-idea-challenge-today/#allView

DCFS 2014 in Turku

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at University of Turku organizes 16th International Workshop on Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems during August 5-8, 2014. Preliminary information can be found at http://www2.math.utu.fi/projects/dcfs2014/.

TUCS GP travel reports

TUCS GP travel report: KATAJA Seminar on Qualitative Business Research by Abayomi Baiyere 

Full name of the event: KATAJA Seminar on Qualitative Business Research

Place and date: Brussels, Belgium, May 12th – 15th, 2014

Type of event: Seminar

The scientific profile of the event: The course employed very creative and learning focused approaches in communicating the course and in achieving the objectives of the course. The objective of the course is to expand my knowledge on the different qualitative approaches, and to highlight its potential for my doctoral dissertations. Also another goal of the course is to help students in identifying relevant qualitative methodologies and methods for their specific doctoral research. The course involved intensive pre-course studies and assignments, several group interactions, individual presentations and encouraged active participation and provided room for constructive feedback.

Number of participants: About 20

Touristic impressions: Brussels was an interesting place but due to the intensive nature of the course there was not so much time to explore the city. However a quick glimpse of the town and a visit to the famous Manneken Pis were activities that highlight the touristic aspect of the trip.

TUCS GP travel report: INFORTE Seminar on Information Infrastructures by Abayomi Baiyere 

Full name of the event: INFORTE Seminar on Information Infrastructures

Place and date: Helsinki, Finland, February 12th – 14th, 2014

Type of event: Seminar

The scientific profile of the event: This was seminar on Information Infrastructures from the theoretical and practical views. The course employed the use of case studies and analysis of recent high quality literatures in the topic of information infrastructures. Additionally, there were participant presentations which gave room for reflection and an opportunity for valuable feedback.

Number of participants: About 20–30

Touristic impressions: Although, Helsinki is not a new location, it still has the touristic appeal as there are always new things to explore. This time I discovered the architectural splendor of the church in the rock.

TUCS GP travel report: ICISO 2014 by Muhammad Nazrul Islam 

Full name of the event: 15th IFIP International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2014)

Place and date: Shanghai, China, May 23rd – 25th, 2014

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The ICISO is devoted to the latest research and application of informatics in organisations and organisational semiotics. The aim of the conference is to provide a focal forum for participants from various domains of information management and information systems, computational science, semiotics, business and engineering. This year the conference had a special focus on Service Science and Knowledge Innovation.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: In my opinion, the speaker Prof. Gondy Leroy from Claremont Graduate University delivered interesting talks on ‘Designing User Studies in Informatics’. Her discussion motivates methodological issues and highlights emerging themes in design studies.

Number of participants: Approximately 70 people

Social events: Some snacks and drinks were offered during the conference days in the conference venue. The “conference dinner” takes place on Saturday, 24 may at 18:00.

Touristic impressions: I have visited a few tourist places near to my conference venue: Yuyuan market, The Bund, and oriental Pearl Tower. The night view of Bund was really nice. The weather was also very comfortable!

TUCS GP travel report: NAACL HLT/ SemEval 2013 by jari Björne  

Full name of the event: NAACL HLT / SemEval 2013

Place and date: Atlanta, USA, June 9th – 15th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: NAACL is part of the ACL-conferences, the largest yearly conferences for computational linguistics. The SemEval shared task presented several text mining challenges, we participated in the DDI extraction (drug-drug interactions) challenge.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: The presentation “WBI-NER: The impact of domain-specific features on the performance of identifying and classifying mentions of drugs” which described the best performing system in the SemEval DDI extraction NER (named entity recognition) subtask.

Number of participants: Perhaps around a 1000 or so.

Social events: Conference reception at the “World of Coca-Cola”

Touristic impressions: The conference venue at the Westin Peachtree Plaza was very functional, and it was great that affordable student accommodation was provided at the conference hotel. The view from the room high up in the skyscraper was beautiful, and the southern food was good. The city of Atlanta was a bit scary, the central part of the city was very run-down and didn't feel safe, especially after dark. On the other hand, the olympic park area where the conference reception was held was pleasant. The metro system worked well. Atlanta seemed to be a very divided city, with a huge gap between the rich suburbs and the poor center, with gleaming corporate skyscrapers rising above a depressing landscape of urban decay.

TUCS GP travel report: LATIN 2014 by Mikhail Barash 

Full name of the event: 11th Latin American Theoretical Informatics Symposium (LATIN 2014)

Place and date: Montevideo, Uruguay, March 31st – April 4th, 2014

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: LATIN is a biannual conference held in South America. The conference has a wide range of topics of interest around Computer Science, including algorithms, automata theory, combinatorial algorithms, computational geometry, computing and others.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: A very interesting invited talk has been given by Ronitt Rubinfeld on computational complexity. Among technical presentations, I like very much the talks given by Ruben van der Zwaan on approximating vector scheduling and by Carla Negri Lintzmayer about sorting permutations.

Number of participants: approximately 65 participants

Social events: There was a guided bus tour around the districts of Montevideo. We were taken to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, where was had a small picnic. Social dinner has been held during one of the days of the conference, where they served traditional South American meat meals.

Touristic impressions: Montevideo is a “small” (by standards of South America) city situated right on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Though the season in April is autumn, it was extremely hot. It was also interesting to see how almost everyone outside was drinking traditional tea – maté – carrying with them a thermos bottle and a special cup.

TUCS GP travel report: AFL 2014 by Mikhail Barash

Full name of the event: 14th International Conference on Automata and Formal Languages (AFL 2014)

Place and date: Szeged, Hungary, May 27th – 29th, 2014

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: This is a triennial conference held in different cities of Hungary. AFL is a specialized forum which covers all aspects of automata and formal languages theory, including grammars, formal power series, algorithms for automata, quantum computing, and different applications of formal language theory in biology, linguistics and other fields.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I liked very much the invited talk given by Markus Holzer on descriptional complexity of regular languages. Another remarkable talk, given by Brink van der Merwe, was devoted to practical regular expression matching.

Number of participants: around 45

Social events: After the first day of the conference, we had a visit to Computer Science Museum, where the guide Bohus Mihaly has shown us still working “computational devices”, some which were over 100 years old. This visit was followed by a stand-up party with many interesting discussions.

Touristic impressions: Szeged is a small and nice city with beautiful architecture. The weather was very sunny and I had a chance to walk a bit around the city and take some nice photos.

Open jobs at University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University

Latest publications at TUCS

Edited special issues of journals (3):

Articles in journals (2):

Articles in proceedings (4):

Chapters in edited books (3):

Ph.D. thesis (2):

Technical reports (9):