I n d e x
Research
Related Programmes
Finland
Department of computer science
The department of computer science at the University of Tampere covers the wide range of computer and information sciences from formal languages to social effects of computing.
Pertti Järvinen himself represents the latter. He guides many students in his doctoral seminar. The participants are often part-time students and they are also working as managers, consultants, chief designers in computing field. To give a crude view, some of their research problems are: Women's information society (Vehviläinen), the evaluation model for the DSS development and use (Nykänen), combining the corporate and information systems strategic plans (Lähteenmäki), total quality management in a software house (Holopainen), end user support within distributed corporate computing (Forsman), longitudinal benefits of a car-marketing information system (Wikström), on potential futures of systems analysts (Kuosa), groupware supported co-writing (Ovaska), end user computing (Rantapuska), purchasing of PC to home (Lahtinen), implications of a certain town-wide network (Koponen), an auditor's guidelines for systems design (Lätti), IT outsourcing, resourcing and insourcing in some Finnish companies (Länsipuro), on efficiency of virus-detecting programs (Helenius)
Seppo Visala is interested in philosophical questions of information systems.
Pentti Hietala and his group: Agent-based learning environments
Kari-Jouko Räihä is broadly interested in Human-Computer Interaction and CSCW. With his students, he has studied and developed
- a system for algorithm animation, where the animation is specified using direct manipulation techniques
- automatic and semi-automatic methods for window design (especially dialogue window design)
- multimodal interaction, especially two-handed interaction
- visualization techniques, especially visualisation of large ER-structures
- usability evaluation methods.
He leads a usability laboratory that is used in teaching, research, and for evaluating real software products for the software industry. The laboratory has just received an advanced eye tracker that will be used to develop the evaluation methods further.
Two new projects start in 1997:
- Multimodal Human information Processing and Human-Computer Interaction (a joint project with the Department of Psychology, University of Tampere and the Department of Electrical Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology; funded by the Academy of Finland)
- Intelligent Executive Information Systems
(a joint project with the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki; funded by the Technology Development Center and industry partners)
Further information:
http://www.uta.fi/~kjr/HCI/HCI.html (HCI research)
http://www.uta.fi/~ah/mulmod/ (new multimodality project)
http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/ulab/ (usability laboratory, pages in Finnish)
Marko Helenius (Virus laboratory)
Hannu Kangassalo is interested in data bases and conceptual modelling.
Kai Koskimies & group: Tools for object-oriented software development
The group has concentrated in developing new kinds of tools supporting OO software development from various perspectives. These tools include a system for presenting application requirements in the form of scenario diagrams and generating specifications of the behaviour of the involved objects from scenarios, a system for visualizing and browsing running OO systems, and a framework and
supporting toolkit for OO language implementation. In the future the group will study techniques and tools supporting the design and use of OO frameworks.
Timo Niemi and Kalervo Jarvelin (the Department of Information Studies) carry out research whose aim is to develop facilities and their implementation techniques for an advanced (new generation) database system. In the research a special attention is paid to factors which facilitate query formulation from the view point of the ordinary end user.
Erkki Mäkinen's research interests include formal language theory, grammatical inference, and data structures and algorithms.