Organisation

The Board of HIIT, nominated by the host universities for a 4-year period at a time, decides on HIIT’s overall research strategy and research programmes. The Scientific Advisory Board provides scientific guidance and criticism for the Board a few times per decade. The Director, Vice Directors and the Programme Directors constitute the Steering Group responsible for inter-programme coordination and planning. The main instruments of HIIT are ambitious research programmes that bring together several research groups with different expertise. In addition to these, HIIT is coordinating a lot of activities that support the Helsinki ICT community as a whole (see separate sections on Community Support, Distinguished Lecture Series, and Doctoral Education).

Organisation chart
The organisation chart of HIIT.

At Aalto University, HIIT is administratively supported by the Department of Computer Science and the associated service personnel. Similarly, at the University of Helsinki the administration is handled together with the Department of Computer Science. However, the activities of HIIT span much wider beyond these departments, and HIIT actively supports the Helsinki ICT community as a whole (see the Community Support programme). In research, the activities of HIIT focus on supporting cross-cutting, grand-challenge type research programmes that involve people from not only the CS departments of the two host universities, but also researchers from the SPA and COMNET departments of the Aalto School of Electrical Engineering, and at the University of Helsinki people from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, the Helsinki Institute of Life Science and the Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities. People participating in the research programmes have a double affiliation in the sense that they are first employed by one of the departments of the host universities, and they can then additionally participate in the wide research programmes of HIIT. In administration, the key people supporting HIIT were Miikka Miettinen (coordinator of HIIT), Kaisa Pekkala (coordinator of FCAI), Hilu Kangas-Ranta (coordinator of HiDATA) and Aija Kukkala (coordinator of the HICT network, see Doctoral Education).

Funding

We list the funding sources of each site separately. In 2019, HIIT was coordinated administratively at Aalto University’s Otaniemi campus (Department of Computer Science) and the University of Helsinki’s Kumpula campus (Department of Computer Science). Please note that FCAI and HiDATA were included for the first time in 2018 and the number of persons with projects supported by HIIT more than doubled.

The funding sources of HIIT are shown in Table 1.

HIIT 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 %
Total funding 9 084 157 11 045 646 11 084 000 18 875 956 19 856 961 100%
Universities’ direct funding 1 817 074 1 715 251 1 668 200 1 668 200 1 500 000 8%
Academy of Finland 2 628 116 4 399 003 5 225 195 10 454 119 11 074 261 56%
Business Finland 1 862 474 2 583 535 2 492 631 3 539 786 2 000 514 10%
European Union 2 062 730 1 180 122 485 093 1 349 106 2 225 040 11%
Industry 124 432 720 048 748 541 1 032 504 1 781 981 9%
Competitive univ. funding 481 816 342 210 308 750 142 833 273 151 1%
Other 107 516 105 478 155 590 689 408 1 002 014 5%
Table 1: HIIT funding 2015-2019.

Figure 1: Distribution of HIIT’s funding sources 2015-2019.

Otaniemi funding figures are shown in Table 2. Until 2018, the University of Helsinki transferred 168 200 Eur per year to Aalto University to account for common administrative duties. In 2019 this transfer was not made anymore and both universities provided an equal amount (750 kEur) of direct funding through their own organisations.

AI and Data Science receive Academy of Finland funding to strengthen university research profiles (PROFI), which was about 237 kEur in 2019 and is included in the numbers below.

Otaniemi 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 %
Total funding 4 749 757 6 127 977 6 095 303 11 194 061 10 115 581 100%
Aalto direct funding 827 634 826 824 750 000 750 000 750 000 7%
UH direct funding 168 200 168 200 168 200 168 200 0 0%
Academy of Finland 1 339 032 2 538 644 2 617 473 5 985 637 5 261 313 52%
Business Finland 999 708 1 700 141 1 411 157 2 183 809 1 412 928 14%
European Union 851 751 306 483 424 927 1 092 955 1 030 350 10%
Industry 59 774 218 975 347 904 353 139 906 233 9%
Competetive univ. funding 401 000 342 210 308 750 142 833 273 151 3%
Other 102 659 26 500 66 893 517 488 481 606 5%
Table 2: Otaniemi funding 2015-2019.

Figure 2: Distribution of Otaniemi funding sources in 2019.

Kumpula funding figures are shown in Table 3. Academy of Finland funding to strengthen university research profiles (PROFI), which was 1 347 389 Eur in 2019, is included in the numbers below.

Kumpula 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 %
Total funding 4 334 400 4 917 668 4 988 697 7 681 895 9 741 380 100%
UH direct funding 821 240 720 227 750 000 750 000 750 000 8%
Academy of Finland 1 289 084 1 860 359 2 607 722 4 468 482 5 812 949 60%
Business Finland 862 766 883 393 1 081 475 1 355 977 587 586 6%
European Union 1 210 979 873 638 60 166 256 151 1 194 690 12%
Industry 64 659 501 073 400 637 679 365 875 748 9%
Competetive univ. funding 80 816 0 0 0 0 0%
Other 4 857 78 978 88 697 171 920 520 407 5%
Table 3: Kumpula funding 2015-2019.

Figure 3: Distribution of Kumpula funding sources in 2019.