HIIT Fellow Receives PhD Thesis Award in Theoretical Computer Science
He will present his thesis during ICTCS, the Italian Conference on Theoretical Computer Science, held in Turin. Nicola defended his PhD in January 2024 and joined University of Helsinki in February 2024. He conducted his PhD research under a joint PhD agreement between Gran Sasso Science Institute (L’Aquila, Italy) and Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada). His thesis, Data Compression Meets Automata Theory, introduced a new paradigm extending several compressed data structures used for string processing to graphs and automata, establishing an unexpected connection between string algorithms and regular languages. He received two Best Student Paper Awards (DCC 2022 and ISAAC 2023), and the main results of his research were published in a Journal of the ACM article.
During his PhD, Nicola was supervised by Travis Gagie, Nicola Prezza and Catia Trubiani, and he now works at University of Helsinki with Veli Mäkinen, who leads a prominent group in the field of string processing algorithms and bioinformatics.
Read more news
AI for Food Science workshop sparks international collaboration
How can universities, research institutes, and food companies work together to harness the power of emerging AI for food science? University of Helsinki organized a dedicated workshop, bringing leading European researchers and industry experts to the same table.
RealYou AI will develop the next generation of personalized AI decision assistants
Researchers to build cognitive machine learning that will improve decision-making with instantly personalized intelligent assistance.
Europe’s best AI literacy initiative for education comes from Finland
Generation AI, a Finnish initiative for AI literacy in education and research, has won the European Union’s 2026 Digital Skills Award for promoting AI literacy among children and young people. The award ceremony was held in Brussels on 30 June 2026.