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).
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% |

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% |

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% |
