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TUCS Newsletter 27.3.2014

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Salomaa@80 International Conference on June 2-3, 2014 in Turku

TUCS activities

New courses

Announcements

Latest publications at TUCS

Salomaa@80 International Conference on June 2-3, 2014 in Turku

Department of Mathematics and Statistics of University of Turku will host a two-day conference (June 2nd - June 3rd) celebrating the 80th birthday of academician Arto Salomaa. Arto Salomaa is one of the founders of and key driving forces behind TUCS.

For half a century Arto Salomaa’s research and writings inspired and guided some of the most significant developments in foundations of computer science.He is one of the founders of, and the towering figure in, formal languages and automata theory. As a researcher, Arto is famous for being prolific, deep and broad, and for pioneering many important research directions. He has had more than 500 publications including 13 books translated into at least 7 different languages. His writings have had enormous influence on the development of theoretical computer science. Well-known examples are his famous "Formal Languages" book declared a classic by the Association for Computing Machinery and the three-volume masterpiece "Handbook of Formal Languages". His retirement in 1999 was in name only: his research is still flourishing and he is pursuing both classic and novel research directions. He has supervised 25 doctoral students, many of whom became well-recognized scientists in their own right and who are at key locations around the world.

Arto's enormous achievements are well recognized by the scientific community both in Finland and abroad. He is one of the most decorated computer scientists - among others, he holds 9 doctorates honoris causa. In 2001 he received Finland's highest scientific honor when he was appointed an Academician - only 12 scientists may hold this title at any moment of time.

The conference will take place at Publicum (T50 on the map) building in the auditorium Pub1.The program of the conference can be found at http://www2.math.utu.fi/projects/salomaa80/index.php

TUCS activities

TUCS Research Programme activities

TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series

TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series is a forum for public lectures by outstanding national and international researchers in all aspects of computing, coming both from academia and industry. All lectures are free and open to the public.

Turku Centre for Computer Science (TUCS) is a joint research institute of University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University. The research activity in TUCS is currently carried out through four research programmes:

Next lectures in the series:

Coffee will be served before the lecture at 12.45.

TUCS GP PhD defences

Mari Huova
On Friday, April 11th, TUCS GP Student Mari Huova presents her Doctoral thesis "Combinatorics on Words: New Aspects on Avoidability, Defect Effect, Equations and Palindromes" for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Huova is Professor Ion Petre, Åbo Akdemi University. Professor Juhani Karhumäki will act as the custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Edu 1, Educarium


Ville Timonen
On Friday, April 11th, TUCS GP Student Ville Timonen presents his Doctoral thesis "Scalable Algorithms for Height Field Illumination" for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Timonen is Ulf Assarsson, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Professor Jan Westerholm will act as the custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Lambda, ICT Building

Moazzam Niazi

On Wednesday, March 26th, TUCS GP Student Moazzam Fareed Niazi presented his Doctoral thesis "A Model-Based Development and Verification Framework for Distributed System-on-Chip Architecture" for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Niazi was Professor Jari Nurmi, Tampere University of Technology. Adjunct Professor Pasi Liljeberg acted as the custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Beta, The ICT Building

TUCS offices move

TUCS staff offices are temporarily moved to the fifth floor. All TUCS staff; Irmeli Laine, Tomi Mäntylä, Outi Tuohi and Ilona Tuominen, are now relocated to room A5064 in the fifth floor of the ICT Building.

New courses

Short course in IS: Multicriteria Decision Modeling in Problem Solving

In period 4 we will be arranging a short course in Information Systems, Multicriteria Decision Modeling in Problem Solving (5cr). The course is on the advanced level and focuses on tools for modelling of real-world, complex problems under conditions of uncertainty. It will be lectured by Professor Mario Fedrizzi, from the University of Trento in Italy. See attached description for more details about the course contents, and below for the schedule.

Preliminary enrollments and questions can be sent to [email protected].

About the lecturer:

Prof. Fedrizzi is Professor in Mathematical Methods for Economics at the Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento in Italy. He is also a Docent in Information Systems at Åbo Akademi. His numerous research interests include group decision analysis, decision support systems, fuzzy decision analysis, and consensus modeling in group decision modelling under uncertainty. He has also been active in consulting and has served on the boards of several investment banks and IT companies.

Schedule:

Week 14:

Monday 31.3, kl.12-15, B3040

Tuesday 1.4, kl.9-12, B3040

Wednesday  2.4, kl.13-16, B3040

Thursday  3.4, kl.13-16, B3040

Friday  4.4, kl.9-12, A3058, Fortran (note place!)

Week 15:

Monday 7.4, kl.13-16, B3040

Tuesday  8.4, kl.9-12, B3040

Wednesday 9.4, kl.13-16, B3040

Thursday 10.4, kl.13-16, B3040

Friday 11.4, kl.9-12, A5059, Consilia, 5th floor (note place!).

Week 16:

Monday 14.4, 13-16, B3040

Tuesday  15.4, kl.9-12, B3040

Wednesday  16.4, kl.13-16, B3040

Courses on transferable skills at University of Turku

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

Courses in English for Research Students at Åbo Akademi University

Further information:  http://www.abo.fi/personal/kurskatalog

Registrations: https://www.abo.fi/personal/en/anmalan

Information on and registration for courses in English at Tritonia EduLab in Vasa:

http://www.tritonia.fi/edulab/shortcourses

Announcements

ACM Turing award 2013

On March 18, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named Leslie Lamport (Microsoft Research) the 2013 winner of the A.M. Turing Award for “imposing clear, well-defined coherence on the seemingly chaotic behavior of distributed computing systems, in which several autonomous computers communicate with each other by passing messages.” His algorithms, models and verification systems have enabled distributed computer systems to play the key roles they’re used in throughout the data center, security and cloud computing landscapes. The award includes a $250,000 prize, with funding support by Intel and Google.

 

The Turing award is widely regarded as the Nobel Prize of computing.

Bulletin of the European Association of Theoretical Computer Science

The 112th issue of the EATCS Bulletin, is now available online at http://www.eatcs.org/beatcs/index.php/beatcs/issue/view/14

Raising Awareness in I&E

PhD students in ICT, you are invited to participate to a 2 days seminar on:

‘Innovation & Entrepreneurship for Researchers in ICT’ (‘Raising awareness in I&E’)

Rennes, France – April 3-4th 2014

 

This seminar is primarily dedicated to the applicants to the EIT ICT Labs Doctoral School and Doctoral Training Centers in ICT Innovation.

 

Objectives:

This seminar is first course in the I&E doctoral training of the EIT ICT Labs Doctoral School in ICT Innovation.

It is strongly targeted to inspiring, motivating and raising awareness among the PhD students on the high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship. It aims at making PhD students understand how Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship articulate and why it is important for Researchers to make the bridge with Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The seminar includes lectures on entrepreneurship and innovation and also group work.

 

Venue:

EIT ICT Labs Colocation Center in Rennes

Campus de Beaulieu, Bât 12 D - 2nd floor

263 avenue du General Leclerc

35000 Rennes, France

 

For more information:

Your contacts at the EIT ICT Labs Doctoral Training Center (DTC) in Rennes:

[email protected] or [email protected]

Information on CLC Rennes, how to get there and accommodations:

http://www.eitictlabs.eu/about-us/nodes-co-location-centres/paris/satellites

http://www.eitictlabs.eu/fileadmin/files/satellites/livretAccueil_CLC_PDF.pdf

 

Registration:

The deadline for registration is March 15th.

To register please send an email to [email protected] (subject : ‘Seminar I&E for Researchers’)

The number of participants is limited. Registration is binding.

Lectures, social program and serving are free of charge for the participants, as described in the program. Travel and accommodation is on participants’ expenses.

EIT ICT Labs @ CeBIT

EIT ICT Labs will participate at CeBIT  booth E44 in hall 9, Hannover, March 10-14. At CeBIT you will get to know EIT ICT Labs' recent achievements and innovative startups in the areas of cloud computing and smart retail solutions. Five demonstrators and their project teams from the field of Smart Retail and Future Cloud will show the functionality of their innovations. Varaani from Finland is one of the demos. They provide personal cloud storage solutions.

We are launching the EIT ICT Labs Idea Challenge for early stage startups on March 11 at CeBIT. More information will be available on the launch day at www.ideachallenge.eitictlabs.eu

More info: https://www.eitictlabs.eu/cebit-2014/cebit-2014/

New people and start-ups at the Helsinki CLC

Dr. Jussi Autere has started as the leader of Helsinki Doctoral Training Centre. He is responsible for organizing the doctoral level innovation and entrepreneurship education in Helsinki.

Before joining ICT Labs, Jussi has been working for ten years as a management consultant and partner at Gearshift Group. He has concentrated in helping his clients to start-up new businesses. In 2008-2009 he worked as a part time Professor of Software Business at Helsinki University of Technology.  In his previous career, Jussi has worked as a CEO of a start-up telecommunications equipment manufacturer VDSL System and a researcher at Institute of Strategy and International Business at Helsinki University of Technology.

Solution 720° enables organizations to control, improve and promote their indoor spaces through indoor air quality & occupational health monitoring & analytics. More information at www.720.fi and from Tomas Novotny, email [email protected]

Finnish Healthcare ICT Conference in Jyväskylä 20.–21.5.2014

Nationwide healthcare ICT conference (HC ICT ‘14) will be held at Paviljonki conference center in the City of Jyväskylä. During the recent years we have arranged this conference in many cities around Finland with over 1 000 health care and ICT experts each year. The exhibition will display a comprehensive view to national and international health care ICT products.

The conference will be arranged in cooperation with the Hospital Districts of Central Finland and South Ostrobothnia and the city of Jyväskylä. Together we have created versatile event, which provides program with current information for various professions in the health care sector and systems specialist. The conference has 40-year long tradition and offers a large range of actual themes with five different collateral sessions during both conference days:

The full program of the HC ICT ‘14 conference, the online registration form and the hotel booking form will be published on our website (www.kunnat.net/atk-paivat) in the beginning of February. For the exhibition gives more information: Kauko Hartikainen, [email protected], phone: +358 504309782

Read more here: http://www.localfinland.fi/en/authorities/social-and-health-services/healthcare-ict-conference-2014/Pages/default.aspx

FinCEAL & VTT workshop on ICT for Societal Challenges and Information Society

FinCEAL & VTT workshop on ICT for Societal Challenges and Information Society

Tuesday 11th March 2014, 12.00 – 18.30

VTT Valimo, Metallimiehenkuja 2, Espoo

FinCEAL (Developing Finnish science, technology and innovation cooperation with Europe, Africa and the LAC Region) and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland are co-organizing a workshop on ICT for Societal Challenges and Information Society on 11th March 2014. The workshop is targeted to researchers and companies working with ICT-related solutions to societal challenges with special interest either in Africa or the Latin America and Caribbean region.

The purpose of this workshop is to:

Network and enhance interdisciplinary cooperation among researchers and companies working in the following themes with experience and/or interest in Africa and LAC:

 

Download the workshop programme here.

 

Please register by 4th March at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15O3d0xIVX7HPFFZgEjxUrpFBLLeWin_Iyg96HB4s0SQ/viewform

The workshop is part of a series of thematic workshops organized by the FinCEAL project that aim to support the networking of the Finnish research community working with Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. More information on the project: www.unipid.fi/finceal.

The workshop is co-organized with VTT Technical Research Centre: www.vtt.fi.

CS2Bio'14

5th International Workshop on Interactions between Computer Science and Biology

 

Affiliated to DisCoTec'14

June 6th, 2014

Berlin, Germany

 http://combio.abo.fi/cs2bio14

 

Biological systems are complex systems whose modeling requires a dramatic change in paradigms that has seen reductionism challenged by holism and Systems Biology a stimulating field to let evolve the science of Complex Systems as a convergent branch (a sort of hyperedge) of Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics.

 

The aim of this workshop is to gather researchers interested in the convergence of Computer Science, Biology and the Life Sciences. In particular, in this 5th edition, we solicit the contribution of original results, from any research areas, such as Mathematics, Physics, Complex Systems, and Computational Science that address both theoretical aspects of modelling and applied work on the comprehension of biological behaviour. Furthermore, to facilitate the integration of different research areas we encourage the presentation of main objectives and preliminary results of active projects on the CS2Bio topics conducted by interdisciplinary teams.

 

*** SCOPE ***

Papers selected for presentation at CS2Bio should either present the modelling of a specific biological phenomenon using formal techniques, or a modelling, simulation, testing or verification approach in computer science that leads to a novel and promising application to a range of

biological or medical systems. In the latter case, some emphasis on the scope and scalability of the approach will be required. The workshop intends to attract researchers interested in models,

verification, tools, and programming primitives concerning the complex interactions encountered. In general, topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

 

Formal Biological Modelling

- Formal methods for the representation of biological systems and their dynamics;

- Theoretical links and comparisons between different formal models for the modelling of biological processes;

- Quantitative (probabilistic, timed, stochastic, etc.) languages and calculi;

- Spatial (geometrical, topological) languages and calculi;

- Prediction of biological behaviour from incomplete information;

- Model checking, abstract interpretation, type systems, etc.

Novel Computational Paradigms for Understanding Biological Complex Systems

- Quantum information and life sciences;

- Computational topology and biomathematics;

- Information processing and biomedicine;

- Statistical mechanics and biophysics;

- Complex Networks and biomolecular dynamics

Tools and Simulations

- Modelling, analysis and simulation tools for systems biology;

- Emergence of properties in complex biological and medical systems;

- Tools for parallel, distributed, and multi-resolution simulation methods;

- Detailed biological case-studies.

 

*** INVITED SPEAKERS ***

 

- Marco Pettini, Université de la Mediterranée

- Vincent Danos, University of Edinburgh

 

*** SUBMISSION GUIDELINES ***

 

We solicit three kinds of contributions:

  - Regular papers: must report previously unpublished work and not be submitted concurrently to another conference with refereed proceedings (limited to 14 pages).

  - Tool presentations: describing new tools or platforms for the modelling of biological systems (limited to 14 pages).

  - Dissemination of project results: concern recent or ongoing work on topics relevant to CS2Bio and are intended to provide discussion and stimulate feedback during the workshop. The focus of a dissemination should be put on the main objectives and preliminary results of active projects on topics relevant to the workshop. There are no restrictions about previous or future publication of the contents of a dissemination, it could also be based on a recently published paper or on a work which has not yet been submitted (limited to 4 pages).

 

Authors should submit their contributions via EasyChair (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cs2bio) in the form of a pdf file compiled using the ENTCS style for the workshop proceedings (http://www.entcs.org/files/cs2bio/prentcsmacro.sty). If necessary, detailed proofs or other additional material can be added in an appendix (referees might review it at their discretion).

 

*** DISSEMINATION ***

 

The CS2Bio 2014 proceedings will be published in a volume of the Elsevier series "Electronic Notes on Theoretical Computer Science".

 

After the event, papers presented at the workshop will be invited to be further extended and submitted to a special issue of the journal "Theoretical Computer Science".  The special issue

will have an open call and a separate review process up to the usual scientific standards of the journal.

 

*** IMPORTANT DATES ***

 

- Submission deadline: 24 March 2014

- Notification to authors: 02 May 2014

- Workshop: 06 June 2014

- Tutorial day: 07 June 2014

 

*** PROGRAM COMMITTEE ***

 

 

 

*** STEERING COMMITTEE ***

 

Well-being in the Information Society (WIS) 2014 - call for papers

University of Turku and the  Baltic Region Healthy Cities Association organize the fifth Well-Being in the Information Society (WIS 2014) conference in Turku 18-20.8.2014.

See more on the conference in www.wis.fi

 

The general topic of the 2014 conference is

 

WIS 2014 – safe and secure cities

 

SUGGESTED TOPICS

We want to focus on livability and quality of (urban) living in this year’s conference, with safety and security strongly in the foreground.

Issues of interest include but are not limited to:

 

-        health promotion, assessment and management in communities

-        secure and equal use of information resources

-        preparing for major catastrophes such as pandemic, infrastructure breakdowns and natural upheavals

-        safe and secure work and education institutions

-        safe living and working environments

-        management of climate change and environmental pollution

-        cyberaggression and cybersecurity

-        management of aggression between population groups

-        e- and m-Health

-        information ethics

-        traffic management

-        safety in medicine

-        policing and firefighting activities

-        impact of culture on urban safety and security

 

FORMATS AND PUBLICATIONS

All accepted conference papers will be published in Springer series CCIS (Communications in Computer and Information Science).

Take a look at the 2012 proceedings:  http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-3-642-32849-7

Best papers as further developed versions are published also in a special Issue of International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations: http://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=ijnvo

 

Papers are presented in two tracks: scientific research and practice-oriented cases, and in two forms: full papers and posters. The word count of submitted abstracts should not exceed 2000 words. The final papers are expected to be 3000 - 5000 words long.

Please submit your abstract through the link in the conference website www.wis.fi

 

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for abstracts 17.03.2014

Notification of acceptance 30.04.2014

Final versions and author registration 01.06.2014

 

ORGANIZERS

Turku School of Economics and Faculty of Medicine, University of Turku and

Baltic Region Healthy Cities Association – WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Cities and Urban Health

in co-operation with Åbo Akademi University, Turku University of Applied Sciences,

the Finnish National Institute of Health and Welfare and University of Eastern Finland.

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/.

The Federated Computer Science Event (Yhdistetyt tietojenkäsittelyn päivät) 2014

The Federated Computer Science Event (Yhdistetyt tietojenkäsittelyn päivät) will be organised on 3.-4.6.2014 by the Lappeenranta University of Technology. The event combines events organised by several societies.

This year we are soliciting unpublished articles pertaining to the themes of the societies. The articles can present original new research results as well as summarize PhD work and research projects. Research summary articles should present the recent advances in their context, and also consider future directions of the topic. All articles will be peer-reviewed and the accepted articles and posters will be published in the conference proceedings with an ISSN number.

Articles can be either longer research articles (maximum of 8 pages) that present and summarize research results, short research articles (maximum of 4 pages) that present the work-in-progress or posters (2 pages) that summarize the key points of the research. Longer and shorter articles will be presented during the conference, and posters (size A0) will be presented in the poster session. We recommend using ACM SIGGRAPH A4-template format for submission. Each year the event has a theme; this year the theme is games and gamification.

Articles are submitted with the Easychair system. The deadlines are the following:

        28.3. Submission deadline to EasyChair

        21.4. Notifications of review results

        2.5. Final camera ready article

Website: http://www2.it.lut.fi/ytp2014/

EasyChair-link: opens at February

On the behalf of the organizing committee,

Chair: Kari Heikkinen {@lut.fi}

TUCS GP travel reports

TUCS GP travel report: INFORTE Seminar on EAM by Abayomi Baiyere 

Full name of the event: INFORTE Seminar on Enterprise Architecture Management

Place and date: Jyväskylä, October 29th – 30th, 2013

Type of event: Seminar

The scientific profile of the event: The Seminar was comprised of 2 days. The first day was oriented more towards the practical utility of EAM. The second day was devoted to specific EAM research topics. I learnt new concepts from the seminar – particularly the concept of corporate intelligence and the value of EAM in the discussion of organisation transformation. On both days, the lectures were complemented by exercises, case discussions, surveys, and an experiment.

Number of participants: about 20

Touristic impressions: Jyväskylä appears to be a nice place with the very many lakes that can be found there.

TUCS GP travel report: INFORTE Seminar on Case Studies in Information Systems by Abayomi Baiyere

Full name of the event: INFORTE Seminar on Case Studies in Information Systems

Place and date: Helsinki, September 25th – 26th, 2013

Type of event: Seminar

The scientific profile of the event: The Seminar was about qualitative research, primarily but not limited to case research, as practiced in the Information Systems (IS) discipline. In the first session, we learnt about different forms of qualitative research published in the IS literature, and discussed the implications for us as researchers and as reviewers. We examined papers published (primarily) in four “mainstream” journals (MISQ, ISR, JAIS, and JMIS) and discussed the characteristics of “successful” papers. Each participant was required to read and present a paper and I volunteered to present an additional paper in place of an absent participant. Summarily, during the workshop, we focused our presentation and learning points on data collection, data analysis, theorizing, and representation for journal publication.

Number of participants: about 20

Touristic impressions: Helsinki is a familiar place but it still has the touristic appeal as there are always new things to explore.

TUCS GP travel report: ACIS 2013 Doctoral Consortium by Abayomi Baiyere 

Full name of the event: ACIS 2013 Doctoral Consortium

Place and date: Melbourne, Australia, December 2nd – 3rd, 2013

Type of event: Doctoral Consortium

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The doctorial consortium provides current PhD students the opportunity to focus on their PhD with experienced researchers as mentors.

Number of participants: about 30-40

Social events: A welcome reception and a dinner were organized as part of the program.

Touristic impressions: Melbourne is a big city with lots of modern attractions as well as interesting wildlife and landscapes. Plus an amazing weather at that time of the year.

TUCS GP travel report: Rennes by Simon Holmbacka 

Full name of the event: 4 Month research visit to Rennes

Place and date: Rennes, France, November 4th 2013 – February 28th 2014

Type of event: Research visit

The scientific profile of the event:

Research cooperation with INSA-Rennes. Worked on energy efficient multi-core video processing, power management for multi-core embedded systems etc. We created one scientific publication which has been submitted to ISPLED2014 conference with the title “Energy Efficiency of Parallel ä QoS Aware Applications”. The cooperation with INSA-Rennes will continue after the visit and a second paper consisting of energy efficient h265 decoding is currently being written.

TUCS GP travel report: Doctoral Seminar on Strategic Foresight by Abayomi Baiyere

Full name of the event: International Doctoral Seminar on Strategic Foresight

Place and date: Melbourne, Australia, December 12th – 13th, 2013

Type of event: Doctoral Consortium

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The Doctoral Seminar creates a unique environment for advancing doctoral research projects of all stages. Student research presentations were followed by senior faculty and journal editor feedback and open discussion. Networking events was facilitated to allow getting to know other doctoral students with similar topics as well as initiating contacts with senior faculty to for example initiate research stays abroad.

Number of participants: about 20

Social events: A visit was organized to the innovation/startup hub of Melbourne.

Touristic impressions: Melbourne is a big city with lots of modern attractions as well as interesting wildlife and landscapes. Plus an amazing weather at that time of the year.

TUCS GP travel report: INFORTE seminar on Big Data and Social Media Analytics by Abayomi Baiyere

Full name of the event: INFORTE Seminar on Big Data and Social Media Analytics

Place and date: Helsinki, April 3rd – 4th, 2013

Type of event: Seminar

The scientific profile of the event: The Seminar gave a description of Big Data and social media analytics with more focus on the analysis of data arising from social media sources. The course also provided an introduction to different social media business models and data collection options provided by each media. In addition we had a detailed network analysis and network visualization section of the seminar which led to a unique learning experience via the susbsequent student group assignment and presentations.

Number of participants: about 20-30

Touristic impressions: Helsinki is a familiar place but it still has the touristic appeal as there are always new things to explore.

TUCS GP travel report: AICE 2013 by Abayomi Baiyere

Full name of the event: The Seventh Conference of the Australian Institute of Computer Ethics (AiCE)

Place and date: Melbourne, Australia, December 3rd, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The event focuses on Ethics and Governance issues of new emerging technologies.

Number of participants: about 20-25

Social events: Lunch was provided at the SAB building of the RMIT University.

Touristic impressions: Melbourne is a big city with lots of modern attractions as well as interesting wildlife and landscapes. Plus an amazing weather at that time of the year.

TUCS GP travel report: PDP 2014 by Adnan Ashraf

Full name of the event: 22nd Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-based Processing (PDP 2014)

Place and date: Turin, Italy, February 12th – 14th, 2014

Type of event: conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: parallel computing, advanced algorithms and applications, GPU computing and hybrid computing, formal approaches to parallel and distributed systems, distributed and network-based computing, models and tools, systems and architectures, advances in high-performance bioinformatics, systems and synthetic biology, high-performance computing in modelling and simulation, on-chip parallel and network-based systems, big data, multi-core and many-core systems for embedded computing, cloud computing, energy-aware computing, security in networked and distributed systems

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: keynote by Professor Maurice Herlihy on Locks, Transactions, and Concurrent Objects.

Number of participants: about 150

Social events: welcome reception at Mole Antonelliana and conference dinner at Circolo dei Lettori.

Touristic impressions: fantabulous

TUCS GP travel report: ISPIM by Abayomi Baiyere

Full name of the event: 6th ISPIM Innovation Symposium

Place and date: Melbourne, Australia, December 8th – 11th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The event brings together researchers, industry executives, thought leaders and policy makers with a shared interest in innovation management, the 6th ISPIM Innovation

Symposium focused on current and topical issues relating to innovation. It was Organised by ISPIM, and hosted by the Victorian Universities Innovation Management Network.

Number of participants: about 250

Social events: A gala dinner was organized at the world famous Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). In addition delegates were invited to a relaxing evening and Aussie BBQ at Alumbra, located at the tip of Central Pier, Docklands and boasting stunning views of Victoria Harbour and out towards the Bolte Bridge

Touristic impressions: Melbourne is a big city with lots of modern attractions as well as interesting wildlife and landscapes. Plus an amazing weather at that time of the year.

TUCS GP travel report: IRIS and SCIS 2013 by Marko Niemimaa

Full name of the event: 36th IRIS seminar and the 4th SCIS conference

Place and date: Oslo, Norway, August 11th – 14th, 2013

Type of event: conference+workshop

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The IRIS seminar is considered to be the world’s first Information Systems

Science seminar. As a general ISS seminar, it covers a really broad range of topics.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: The most inspiring presentation was from Tom Igoe (New York University, USA) who gave a presentation of their engineering education. In lieu of typical mathematically oriented engineering students, their programme had students from a very broad background (mostly artists), like performance artists. The diverse backgrounds had enabled very innovative engineering (though mostly non-functional).

Number of participants: ~90

Social events: Each evening the seminar/conference organized a dinner. As the venue was located in the middle of nowhere, it offered good opportunities for networking.

Touristic impressions: The area is historically significant (in Sanner, approx. 50km from Oslo). The conference venue was a rather old small rustic “mansion”, although in good condition, located in a rural area.

TUCS GP travel report: ACIS 2013 by Abayomi Baiyere

Full name of the event: 24th Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Place and date: Melbourne, Australia, December 4th – 6th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) is the premier conference in Australasia for Information Systems academics. The conference covers technical, organisational, business, and social issues in the application of Information Technology (IT)

Number of participants: between 300-400

Social events: Morning and Afternoon tea were provided, and the conference also included a welcome reception at the RMIT SAB Building and a Conference Dinner at the State Library of Victoria.

Touristic impressions: Melbourne is a big city with lots of modern attractions as well as interesting wildlife and landscapes. Plus an amazing weather at that time of the year.

TUCS GP travel report: NCMA 2013 by Mikhail Barash

Full name of the event: 5th Workshop on Non-Classical Models of Automata and Applications (NCMA 2013)

Website: http://tinyurl.com/qf9q2hp

Place and date: Umeå, Sweden, August 13th – 14th, 2013

Type of event: Workshop

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The workshop has been devoted to studies of different models of computation, both non-classical and classical ones, as well as various kinds of automata and grammars.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: As considering the research topic I am interested in, I liked the paper by H. Björklund and P. Ericson on the complexity of deterministic tree-walking transducers. A very interesting invited talk has been given by K. Salomaa on input-driven pushdown automata (a joint work with A. Okhotin).

Number of participants: around 25

Social events: On the first day of the workshop there was a conference dinner in one of the restaurants. After all the talks of the workshop were presented, there was an excursion to a beautiful island of Norrbyskär followed by a visit to its museum.

Touristic impressions: On my way to NCMA 2013 I took a ferry from Vaasa, and thus had a chance both to visit the city and then to enjoy beautiful views of the Gulf of Bothnia. I have also taken some nice photos during the boat trip to Norrbyskär.

Open jobs at University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University

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