Siamese neural networks applied to algorithm selection in recommender systems
The performance of a recommendation algorithm varies in different scenarios, and intuitions about what algorithms are best suited to a given scenario can be elusive even to recommender system experts. Furthermore, choosing a single algorithm that performs well across all the scenarios often reduces the effectiveness of the system in specific scenarios. In the domain of scholarly article recommendation, for example, […]
Foundations of animal-computer interaction explored with monkeys of the Helsinki Zoo
Much like humans, animals have also been using computers for a long time. Historically animals have used computer technology in space, used lexigrams (symbol keyboards) to form language, and dolphins have used underwater keyboards. Drawing parallels to human-computer interaction (HCI) research, which studies how humans use computers, ACI aims to investigate how animals interact with technology and the design of […]
Momentum of the MyData movement continues
The conferences of MyData Global have established their position as the premier events for the rapidly growing community interested in human-centered personal data management. MyData 2019, organised on 25-27 September in Helsinki, brought together 975 participants from 46 countries. The programme was arranged in 9 thematic tracks with “Rebuilding trust – for human-centered […]
Nordita program on Solar Helicities brought together observers, modelers and theorists
Understanding the Sun to the extent that we can predict how its magnetic field drives space weather and climate is an extremely challenging but important problem for the present-day, increasingly hi-tech, society. Key variables in this process are solar helicities, broadly speaking meaning twist of velocity or magnetic field. Magnetic helicity, for example, can be linked to the eruptibility of […]
Automatic dialogue generation demonstrated in an international conference on games
How does natural language generation relate to games? These two concepts that are seemingly far away from each other are surprisingly related. In the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2019), two doctoral students of the University of Helsinki, Khalid Alnajjar from computer science and Mika Hämäläinen […]
Thermal cameras hold promise for improved energy management in smart buildings
Improving energy management of buildings is among the most promising application areas of new technology for sustainable living. The Pervasive Data Science Group of the University of Helsinki is experimenting with thermal cameras to gather fine-grained information for use as actionable feedback to heating, cooling and ventilation (HVAC) devices in shared living spaces. The idea is […]
Collaboration with Novartis in the field of Bayesian modelling
With support from HIIT, Topi Paananen from the Probabilistic Machine Learning (PML) group at Aalto University, recently did a 3-month research visit to the pharmaceutical company Novartis in Switzerland. During the visit, Topi and his collaborators worked on methods for constructing prior distributions in Bayesian analyses on longitudinal data sets. The methods were used with real medical data […]
Aalto’s Data Management Group develops cross-disciplinary collaboration in computational social science
Marta Kołczyńska was a visiting researcher at the Department of Computer Science of Aalto University from 21 April to 23 June, 2019. Marta is a post-doctoral researcher in sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. During the visit, she collaborated with the group of Aristides […]
Research collaboration with Stockholm University in the field of Human-Computer Interaction
With the aid of HIIT Community Support, Jesse Haapoja, who is part of the Digital Content Communities (DCC) group at Aalto University’s Department of Computer Science, visited the Post-Interaction Computing group (PIC) at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University, Sweden. The visit lasted for three months during the spring of 2019. PIC […]
Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon #DHH19 | 15.-24.5.2019
Helsinki Digital Humanities Hackathon #DHH19 gathered students and researchers of humanities, social sciences, and computer science in May at the University of Helsinki. During a week and a half of intensive multi-disciplinary work, the groups applied digital methods to a variety of datasets, with the goal of solving research questions in the following themes:
- The […]
HIIT Open 2019 programming contest
The 4th HIIT Open programming contest was organised on 25 May 2019 in Otaniemi. The contest was open to everyone interested in programming and algorithmic challenges, and in addition to the universities in the Helsinki region, there were participants from Finnish high schools and companies, and two teams from Tallinn University of Technology. The youngest team, named “Piltit”, was not even in high school yet. The […]
Application of big data methods in sustainability science discussed in a workshop
Big data and increasing computing power can contribute to more sophisticated monitoring and modeling to address sustainability challenges and enable more informed decision-making. For instance, ecological monitoring towards resource optimisation, environmental risk assessment, and real-time reporting and assessment of environmental quality indicators are domains where big data is increasingly used. At the same time, environmental social scientists are discovering […]
5G enabled IoT innovations created at IoThon
5G mobile networks are tested and built all around the world and companies are looking for new business areas and service concepts enabled by 5G. IoThon 2019 brought together 110 students and developers from all over Europe for a 48-hour hackathon with challenges set by Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Telia and RIOT community. The challenges ranged from […]
Multi-disciplinary research is leading to broader perspectives on socio-technical systems
This year’s ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency took place in Atlanta at the end of January. Jouni Harjumäki, a data science master’s student at the University of Helsinki, participated in the conference with support from HIIT.
Computer science oriented research in this field has, broadly, followed one of two lines. The first, fairness-aware machine learning, is […]
Aalto’s Mobile Cloud Computing Group is Collaborating with CMU in Wearable Cognitive Assistance
Cognitive assistance is a promising application area for wearable computing. In the context of mechanical assembly, the user is guided through the step-by-step sequence of a task workflow. The end point of each step (e.g. a particular screw mounted flush into a workpiece) needs to be defined precisely, while being tolerant of alternative paths to reaching that end […]
Researchers in computer vision and natural language processing are finding common ground
Computer vision and natural language processing are normally thought of as two separate research fields. However, significant merger is happening in some areas, such as image and video captioning and visual question answering. This creates interesting opportunities for collaboration.
The Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference (EMNLP) has opened a special track on vision and language. Hamed […]
Multidisciplinary research project explored possibilities of wearable technology in performing arts
A multidisciplinary research project titled “Digitalising Performance With Wearables and Software” brought together Aalto ARTS, Aalto Science and the University of the Arts Helsinki for fruitful collaboration. The idea was conceived by Dr. Sofia Pantouvaki, Professor of Costume Design, and Dr. Mario Di Francesco, Professor of Computer Science. Realising that light was going to be a crucial part […]
Fairness and bias of the COMPAS algorithm compared to human assessments
The Data Mining Group of Aalto University is collaborating with researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Turku to explore algorithmic and human fairness and bias in decision making. In particular, they focus on racial bias in the predictions of the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS) algorithm, a […]
Aalto’s Mobile Cloud Computing group deepens collaboration with IE Business School
In a world where the functionality of products and services is rapidly growing, artificial intelligence (AI) could provide new tools for understanding the structure and dynamics of the ideation challenge in innovation, e.g. where do original and creative ideas come from, and how AI tools could enhance this important part of the often ad hoc and sub optimal innovation process.
With […]
Effectiveness of Augmented Reality explored in a user study in Heureka
Professor Yu Xiao’s group at Aalto ELEC has initiated multi-disciplinary research collaboration with professor Atte Oksanen’s group at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Tampere. They have developed an Augmented Reality quiz for the visitors of the Finnish Science Center Heureka. While walking around, the visitors see questions and problems on augmented objects in the exhibition space.
The […]