Annual Report 2005

Helsinki Institute for Information Technology – Basic Research Unit (HIIT/BRU)

The Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) is a joint research unit of the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University of Technology. The unit aims at significantly enhancing strategic research in the field of computer science, while improving the co-operation between the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology. HIIT consists of two units: the Advanced Research Unit (headed by Martti Mäntylä), which works in co-operation with the industries and functions primarily at the University of Technology , and the new Basic Research Unit (headed by Heikki Mannila, and starting from September 2004, Esko Ukkonen).

Some fifty researchers work in BRU. The unit is mostly located at the Department of Computer Science at the Kumpula campus. Part of it operates at Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi. The Basic Research Unit (BRU) carries out first-rate basic research in the field of computer science, in close co-operation with end-users in other disciplines and in the industries. Its main research areas are theory and applications in data analysis, adaptive computing and neuroinformatics.

In 2005, the ContextPhone software developed by Professor Hannu Toivonen's team continued to attract international attention. At MIT, for example, a field study lasting one year was carried out with 100 users of ContextPhone. The results included the observation that some people are very predictable when it comes to movements and contacts, others completely unpredictable.

The neuro-informatics group developed a statistical method and software package called LiNGAM (Linear non-gaussian acyclic model) for the analysis of causal relations between continuous data variables. The method was presented at the prestigious conference Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence in Edinburgh . Another important project was the development of new statistical estimation methods for computationally difficult models.

Within adaptive computing, the EU project MobiLife, focused on context-inference in context-aware systems, the work on which was managed and administrated by the unit. Among other things, the project has implemented a general inference component that allows the use of different inference mechanisms, such as Bayesian classification.

Contact persons: Professor Esko Ukkonen, Academy Professor Heikki Mannila

Homepage: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/hiit_bru/ , http://www.hiit.fi/

Publications:

Afrati, F. & Das, G. & Gionis, A. & Mannila, H. & Mielikäinen, T. & Tsaparas, P.
Mining chains of relations. In: ICDM 2005, Fifth IEEE International Conference onData Mining, p. 553-556. Proceedings 2005, 4 s..

Floréen, P. & Kaski, P. & Kohonen, J. & Orponen, P.
Lifetime maximization for multicasting in energy-constrained wireless networks. IEEE journal on selected areas in communications 23 (2005) : 1, s. 117-126.

Hyvönen, S. & Junninen, H.i & Laakso, L. & Dal Maso, M. & Grönholm, T. & Bonn, B. & Keronen, P. & Aalto, P. & Hiltunen, V. & Pohja, T. & Launiainen, S. & Hari, P. & Mannila, H. & Kulmala, M.
A look at aerosol formation using data mining techniques. Atmospheric chemistry and physics 5 (2005), s. 3345-3356.

Raento, M. & Oulasvirta, A. & Petit, R. & Toivonen, H.
ContextPhone: a prototyping platform for context-aware mobile applications.
IEEE pervasive computing 4 (2005) : 2, s. 51-59.

Shimizu , S. & Hyvärinen A. & Kano Y. & Hoyer P.O.
Discovery of non-gaussian linear causal models using ICA , Proc. 21st Conference of Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2005), 2005, Edinburgh , UK

Research projects

Networking and Architecture for Proactive Systems - Algorithmics (NAPS)
Software Platform and Component Environment for yoU (Space4U)
Advanced data analysis in vision research
Statistical modelling of image and video data
Independent component analysis and its extensions
APRIL II
Context recognition by user situation data analysis (Context)
Gene mapping and diagnostics: computational tools for new high-throughput laboratory technologies (Altti)

International visits

To the unit

Shohei Shimizu
Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Osaka University , 16 September 2003 - 31 March 2005

Professor Dimitris Papadopoulos
Database Lab , Department of Computer Science and Engineering , University of California, Riverside, 25 February - 6 March 2005

Professor Foto Afrati
School of Electrical and Computing Engineering National Technical Universtity of Athens , 30 March – 15 June 2005

Associate professor Gautam Das
Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Texas at Arlington , 24 May -7 July 2005

PhD student Robert Gwadera
Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University , 6 September -9 October 2005

Dr. Alexander Hinneburg
Institute for Informatics, Martin-Luther University , Germany , 1 September -23 September 2005

Siegfried Nijssen
Institut für Informatik Freiburg, University of Freiburg , 20 November – 3 December 2005

Dr. Ata Kaban
School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham , UK , 11-24 September 2005

From the unit

Researcher Niina Haiminen
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center , NY , USA , 23 May – 12 August 2005

Researcher Evimaria Terzi
Intelligent Information Systems Group, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA, USA, 23 May – 2 December 2005