Research projects
Information management
Knowledge discovery in biological databases (Biomine)
Period: 3/2005-12/2007
Researchers: Hannu Toivonen, Petteri Sevon, Lauri Eronen, Petteri Hintsanen, Kimmo Kulovesi
Funding: Tekes, Jurilab, Biocomputing Platforms, GeneOS (other partners are the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Helsinki , Karolinska Institutet in Sweden , VTT Biotechnology and CSC)
The project develops methods and tools for the analysis of public bio-databases (sequences, proteins, interactions, articles etc). With their help, bio-scientists can enhance their own data, discover previously unknown connections and analogies to public databases, and aim resources at the most promising objects of further study. The main application focus is on further analysis of candidate genes found in gene mapping. The project has studied the presentation of biological information as a graph, where the nodes represent different concepts (e.g. genes, proteins, tissue, phenotypes, cellular component ) and the edges represent the relations between them (e.g. the connection between gene and biological process reported in a gene database). The project has developed methods for the analysis of such graphs and the automatic searching and visualisation of such relations between the concepts.
User context and privacy (Context)
Period: 01/2003-07/2007
Researchers: Kari Laasonen, Mika Raento
Funding: HeCSE, HIIT/BRU, Academy of Finland
This project studies the characterisation and analysis of user contexts, and the utilisation of context data in pro-active computing. Special focus is laid on the problems of privacy, algorithms for analysing context data, and software technology for context-aware applications. The project is a co-operation with the User Experience group at the Applied Research Unit at HIIT. The project developed the ContextPhone software, which collects, saves and relays context information in normal S60 mobile phones. It can also automatically annotate the pictures taken with camera phones with context information and move them e.g. to a website. With the help of this software, the project has studied the effect of relaying context information on communicationand developed methods for refining cell-basedlocation data into a more useful, logical form. ContextPhone has been used in research at Berkeley , MIT, and the University of Art and Design Helsinki, among others.
Collaborative Guidance and Knowledge Systems (CoGKS)
Period: 08/2003-08/2007
Researchers: Jussi Piitulainen, Antoine Doucet, Helena Ahonen-Myka.
Funding: A cooperation with UH/language technology, UH/Department of Translation Studies, HUT/BIT, HUT/SoberIT, HUT Knowledge engineering, VTT Information technology, TEKES, Wärtsilä, Fujitsu Services, Nokia Business Infrastructure, Pasanet/Lingsoft, RAY, Citec
The project is a sequel to the 4M project ( Mobile and Multilingual Maintenance Man) that developed a knowledge support system for maintenance personnel. The goal of the CoGKS project is to develop a platform for free communication between maintenance personnel supported by the 4M system. The 4M system is supposed to ‘listen in' on the conversation to be able to offer the right kind of support for each situation. Our group is in charge of dynamic information retrieval on the basis of keywords from the conversation. In the core of the 4M and CoGKS systems, there are a group of ontologies where the necessary knowledge about the subject area and about communication is deposited. The automation of ontology-building is one of the focal points of research in the project. In our group, the emphasis this year has been on retrieving diverse knowledge from a large body of maintenance documents.