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TUCS Newsletter 31.1.2014

Content of the newsletter

TUCS activities

New courses

Announcements

Latest publications at TUCS

TUCS activities

TUCS Research Programme activities

TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series

TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series is a forum for public lectures by outstanding national and international researchers in all aspects of computing, coming both from academia and industry. All lectures are free and open to the public.

Turku Centre for Computer Science (TUCS) is a joint research institute of University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University. The research activity in TUCS is currently carried out through four research programmes:

The series will continue this spring with a new set of great speakers with the following speakers already confirmed:

Coffee will be served before the lecture at 12.45.

Credit for TUCS Distinguished Lectures

It is possible to get one study point for having attended at least four Distinguished Lectures during 2013. To get the credit the student must have a ÅA-student number. If you are a UTU-student and do not have the ÅA-number yet, please fill in the JOOPAS agreement for the course "TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series". Then please send the ÅA-number to TUCS office, e-mail: [email protected]

TUCS Study Report round 1.2.-28.2.2014

The annual TUCS Study Report round will take place 1.2-28.2.2014. TUCS doctoral students have the obligation to report the progress of their studies once a year. This duty concerns all students with TUCS status (part-time as well as full-time students, students getting a salary/grant from TUCS, a department or a project, as well as students who do not get any financing from TUCS or the departments).

The study report will be done electronically at: https://www.tucs.fi/studyreport/ . The system will open 1 February 2014. Please note that the system closes late on 28th of February after which it is not possible to fill in the report anymore. The reporting period is 1.1.2013-31.12.2013.

TUCS GP Doctoral Defences

On Friday, January 24th, TUCS GP Student Sonja Leskinen presented her Doctoral thesis "m-Equine: IS Support for the Horse Industry" for public criticism. The opponent of M.Sc. Leskinen was Professor Doug Vogel, Harbin Institute of Technology, P.R. China. Professor Pirkko Walden acted as the custos at this public defence.

Time: 12 noon
Place: Auditorium Gamma, The ICT Building

New courses

New Inforte courses

Upcoming events during winter 2014

Practise Research

Jan 20-21

Helsinki

Sign up on Wednesday Jan 15th at the latest

Wireless Automation: Challenges, Requirements and Applications

Jan 30-31

Vaasa

Sign up on Wednesday Jan 22nd at the latest

 

Information infrastructure

Feb 13-14

Helsinki

 

Requirement patterns

March 18

Oulu

 

***

 

Participating all seminars and workshops is FREE OF CHARGE for PhD students and staff members working in participating university departments. Check out the member list 2014 when registering: www.inforte.fi/participate

 

Courses on transferable skills at University of Turku

http://www.utu.fi/fi/Tutkimus/tutkijakoulu/courses/Sivut/home.aspx

Announcements

EIT ICT Labs I&E course for doctoral students

"RAISING I&E AWARENESS" innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) course for PhD students

Program & more information: http://www.eitictlabs.eu/news-events/events/article/raising-ie-awareness/#allView

DATE: 25-26 February, 2014

VENUE: 1st floor Seminar Hall at Open Innovation House, Otaniementie 19 B, Espoo, Finland

ORGANISER:  EIT ICT Labs, Helsinki, Finland.

EIT ICT Labs Doctoral School course Raising Awareness in I&E aims at fostering the innovation and entrepreneurial spirits among the doctoral students. It is strongly targeted to inspiring, motivating and raising awareness among the doctoral students on the high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship. The seminar includes views on the possibilities of entrepreneurship and innovation and also hands-on learning experience.

Who can attend?

All doctoral students at the partnering universities of EIT ICT Labs. List of ICT Labs partners, please visit: http://www.eitictlabs.eu/about-us/partners-of-eit-ict-labs/

Registration via web, Deadline 17 Feb 2014.

http://www.eitictlabs.eu/news-events/events/article/raising-ie-awareness/#allView 

No registration fee. Travel and accommodation not included.

More information: [email protected]

Learning outcomes:

-Understanding  how to use academic research as a springboard to start new business

-Seeing the possibilities of entrepreneurship in commercializing research (on the focal areas of ICT Labs )

-Testing own ideas and capabilities as the basis of commercial products or services

-Recognizing characteristics of innovation and entrepreneurship in the ICT field

-Learning the basic approaches in planning and developing new businesses

-Being able to navigate the market environment (local vs. global industry)

-The challenges and roles that new ventures and business activities play in the national economy

-The ability to recognize recent business trends in ICT.

Well-being in the Information Society (WIS) 2014 - call for papers

University of Turku and the  Baltic Region Healthy Cities Association organize the fifth Well-Being in the Information Society (WIS 2014) conference in Turku 18-20.8.2014.

See more on the conference in www.wis.fi

 

The general topic of the 2014 conference is

 

WIS 2014 – safe and secure cities

 

SUGGESTED TOPICS

We want to focus on livability and quality of (urban) living in this year’s conference, with safety and security strongly in the foreground.

Issues of interest include but are not limited to:

 

-        health promotion, assessment and management in communities

-        secure and equal use of information resources

-        preparing for major catastrophes such as pandemic, infrastructure breakdowns and natural upheavals

-        safe and secure work and education institutions

-        safe living and working environments

-        management of climate change and environmental pollution

-        cyberaggression and cybersecurity

-        management of aggression between population groups

-        e- and m-Health

-        information ethics

-        traffic management

-        safety in medicine

-        policing and firefighting activities

-        impact of culture on urban safety and security

 

FORMATS AND PUBLICATIONS

All accepted conference papers will be published in Springer series CCIS (Communications in Computer and Information Science).

Take a look at the 2012 proceedings:  http://www.springer.com/computer/general+issues/book/978-3-642-32849-7

Best papers as further developed versions are published also in a special Issue of International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations: http://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=ijnvo

 

Papers are presented in two tracks: scientific research and practice-oriented cases, and in two forms: full papers and posters. The word count of submitted abstracts should not exceed 2000 words. The final papers are expected to be 3000 - 5000 words long.

Please submit your abstract through the link in the conference website www.wis.fi

 

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for abstracts 17.03.2014

Notification of acceptance 30.04.2014

Final versions and author registration 01.06.2014

 

ORGANIZERS

Turku School of Economics and Faculty of Medicine, University of Turku and

Baltic Region Healthy Cities Association – WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Cities and Urban Health

in co-operation with Åbo Akademi University, Turku University of Applied Sciences,

the Finnish National Institute of Health and Welfare and University of Eastern Finland.

DCFS 2014 in Turku

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at University of Turku organizes 16th International Workshop on Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems during August 5-8, 2014. Preliminary information can be found at http://www2.math.utu.fi/projects/dcfs2014/.

The Federated Computer Science Event (Yhdistetyt tietojenkäsittelyn päivät) 2014

The Federated Computer Science Event (Yhdistetyt tietojenkäsittelyn päivät) will be organised on 3.-4.6.2014 by the Lappeenranta University of Technology. The event combines events organised by several societies.

This year we are soliciting unpublished articles pertaining to the themes of the societies. The articles can present original new research results as well as summarize PhD work and research projects. Research summary articles should present the recent advances in their context, and also consider future directions of the topic. All articles will be peer-reviewed and the accepted articles and posters will be published in the conference proceedings with an ISSN number.

Articles can be either longer research articles (maximum of 8 pages) that present and summarize research results, short research articles (maximum of 4 pages) that present the work-in-progress or posters (2 pages) that summarize the key points of the research. Longer and shorter articles will be presented during the conference, and posters (size A0) will be presented in the poster session. We recommend using ACM SIGGRAPH A4-template format for submission. Each year the event has a theme; this year the theme is games and gamification.

Articles are submitted with the Easychair system. The deadlines are the following:

        28.3. Submission deadline to EasyChair

        21.4. Notifications of review results

        2.5. Final camera ready article

Website: http://www2.it.lut.fi/ytp2014/

EasyChair-link: opens at February

On the behalf of the organizing committee,

Chair: Kari Heikkinen {@lut.fi}

ICT ShowRoom 2014 registration

ICT ShowRoom is an exhibition and a competition, in which

The event is open for the public.

The ICT ShowRoom will be organised on Thu 6 March 2014. The registration for the event is now open until 31.1.2014.

More information on the event here: https://abacus.abo.fi/register.nsf/

New start-ups at the Helsinki Co-location Centre

The Helsinki CLC hosts several innovative technology start-ups. Here are some of the newcomers to our ecosystem.

 

eyes³ provides automobile drivers with real-time vision of road conditions and empowers them to take precautionary action in advance of approaching dangerous situations. eyes³ aims to be the global leader in the provision of real-time content and information that enhances the safety and satisfaction of the driving experience: relevant content where and when it matters. www.eyescubed.com

 

Memory Trails is a Helsinki-based startup company founded in 2013 and is creating an exciting web-based, multiplatform wellbeing service for sharing dreams and achieving goals. It looks to understand the variety of triggers, motivation and rewarding to create personalized paths for living and meeting goals both big and small. The service looks beyond quantified self and concentrates on quality of life aspects and how people could change their behavior for the longer term in order to maintain a balanced, healthy life.

 

Checkmylevel is revolutionary product to assess and monitor Training Readiness and recovery. The product combines an assessment device, mobile app and an online service for coaches and trainers. Checkmylevel is targeted for both professional and recreational athletes engaged in sports requiring strength, explosive power, skill and coordination. www.checkmylevel.com

Grants by Tekniikan edistämissäätiö (TES)

The application period for the Tekniikan edistämissäätiö (TES) -grants has begun. The deadline for applications is 7.2.2014.

The foundation awards grants for scientific research, primarily for PhD and post-doc studies. The foundation encourages internationalisation of Finnish students and studies abroad. The foundation also awards grants for foreign post-doc researchers who are employed by a finnish university.

More information: www.tekniikanedistamissaatio.fi 

TUCS GP travel reports

TUCS GP travel report: Cottbus Technical University by Neeraj Sachdeva

Full name of the event: Research Visit to Cottbus Technical University

Place and date: Cottbus, Germany, April 8th – May 30th, 2013

Type of event: Research visit

Reason for visit: Prof Irene Krebs at Cottbus Technical University, Germany has maintained a rich tradition in research on topics related to blindness and information system as an enabler for easier access to information. This research visit was arranged so I could work closely with her and also network with the relevant organizations in Brandenburg (East Germany) area.

Social events: Throughout the 2 months, I attended several social dinners with Prof Krebs and other

contacts in Cottbus.

Touristic impressions: Cottbus is approximately half the size of Turku and has a few tourist attractions on the outskirts, which include Branitz Park (and Branitz Castle) – both of which are over 150 years old, and worth a visit!

TUCS GP travel report: ETHICOMP 2013 by Neeraj Sachdeva

Full name of the event: ETHICOMP 2013 Conference

Place and date: Kolding, Denmark, June 11th – 14th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: ETHICOMP focuses on the ethical and social issues surrounding Information and Communication Technology. The goal of this conference is to look at Information Systems philosophically to challenge tradition and question the impact of the systems that we are building.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: “Printable Guns – An Ieda Whose Time Has come”. Unarguably the most talked about paper of the conference (since the concept of printed guns was new then), this paper opened the doors on the topic of ethics and morality.

Number of participants: Between 60-80

Social events: Breakfast and lunch were provided, and the conference also included a civic reception at Kolding City Hall and a Conference dinner at Hotel Comwell.

Touristic impressions: Kolding was a small city, and rather nice to walk around. At the Kolding city hall, we managed to take pictures wearing the mayor’s 1-kilo Gold pendant, can’t beat that!

TUCS GP travel report: 19th International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems by Ilkka Törmä

Full name of the event: 19th International Workshop on Cellular Automata and Discrete Complex Systems

Place and date: Giessen, Germany, September 17th – 19th, 2013

Type of event: Workshop

My articles:

The scientific profile of the event: The event is a gathering place for researchers of cellular automata and other discrete complex systems. Usually most presentations are computational, showing results of simulations or heuristic estimates, but there are also more formal results.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: Nazim Fatès: Robustness of cellular automata with stochastic perturbations. The talk was about stochastic cellular automata, in particular very simple examples whose dynamical properties are still badly understood or unknown.

Number of participants: Between 30 and 40

Social events: A barbeque at the department of computer science of the local university, a trip to a local brewery (Licher) including beer-tasting, and a conference dinner at a restaurant located in the cellar of a medieval castle.

Touristic impressions: Giessen itself, being a small industrial town, is not particularly interesting to a tourist. It has a museum of mathematics, but unfortunately I did not have time to visit it. That being said, I was told that many of the small villages nearby are very picturesque. The brewery visit was also very interesting, and the cellar restaurant had a nice atmosphere. In general, food was delicious and plentiful.

TUCS GP travel report: ICDM by Samuel Rönnqvist

Full name of the event: IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM)

Place and date: Dallas, Texas, USA, December 7th – 10th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: ICDM is one of the main established conferences in data mining. It has a wide focus, covering data mining algorithms, applications and practice. A workshop is organized in conjunction with the conference, which offers topically more focused sessions of generally very high quality.

Number of participants: about 500 (some absentees due to weather)

Social events: Reception, banquet and museum visit

Touristic impressions: The conference hotel was located in downtown Dallas with mostly office buildings and a few restaurants (including proper burgers and Mexican food) in the vicinity. The unexpectedly icy weather made it harder to get around to see other parts of the city. There is a John F. Kennedy museum and a Science and Technology museum in Dallas; the city is also known for shopping.

TUCS GP travel report:  Summer School in Computational Biology by Bogdan Iancu

Full name of the event: Summer School in Computational Biology

Place and date: Belfast, U.K., September 16th – 18th, 2013

Type of event: summer school

The scientific profile of the event:The summer school had the main purpose of introducing quantitative methods used in the analysis of high-throughput data from biology and especially cancer biology. Given the fast progress of this field, a good understanding of the basic analysis principles and methods is crucial in the process of analysis. The summer school provided lectures and computer tutorials to get hands-on experience with the newly learnt methods. The software used was the statistical programming language R.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: Survival analysis - Jaine Blayney

Number of participants: approx. 30

Touristic impressions: Touristic impressions about the conference venue and its surroundings: Belfast is a beautiful city, people are very friendly and always trying to help tourists out with any information they can give. Among the places I visited, I would like to mention a few beautiful buildings: Queen’s University, Riddel Hall and the city hall. Another touristic attraction is the Big Fish, covered in ceramic tiles, which show Belfast’s history through texts and images.

TUCS GP travel report: MCC13 by Jari-Matti Mäkelä

Full name of the event: MCC13 - Sixth Swedish Workshop on Multicore Computing

Place and date: Halmstad, Sweden, November 25th – 26th, 2013

Type of event: Workshop

My article:

The scientific profile of the event:

The MCC workshop is meant to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries to present and discuss recent work in the area of multi-core computing.

Some examples of topics covered by the presentations were GPU programming, multi-core programming language implementation issues and parallel programming runtime systems. There were also hardware related topics such as multi-core energy efficiency, network-on-chip platforms, memory management problems and multi-core applications in the automotive industry.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I found the work “Considering Quality-of-Service for Resource Reduction using OpenMP” by Artur Podobas et al. most interesting. The presentation was immersive, logically structured and explained the idea and its analysis in a straightforward manner. The presenter also showed a good understanding of the topic.

Number of participants: Hard to estimate the exact number, but probably around 40.

Social events: We had two lunches together at noon in a cafe at the Halmstad University campus, with quite plenty of time to socialize. There was also a dinner on Monday evening at Verona Restaurant, halfway between the city centre and the campus.

Touristic impressions: Halmstad is a famous recreational city in Sweden with a long shared history between Denmark and Sweden, but it is mostly visited in the summertime. We mainly had time to walk around the city in the evenings when most places were already closed and the streets were cold, dark, rainy and deserted. It seemed like a calm, small city with not that many high buildings. The campus was located around 1,5 km from the city centre, where the main attractions (castle, old churches and factories, neon lit bridges etc.) could be found.

TUCS GP travel report:  GlobalSIP 2013 by Stefan Grönroos

Full name of the event: 1st IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing, GlobalSIP 2013

Place and date: Austin, Texas, USA, December 3rd – 5th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The focus of the GlobalSIP conference lies on signal and information processing. Topics relate to, for example, signal processing in radio communications, image processing, computer networks, and smart electricity grids. It is a new flagship conference for the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: Bioinformatics Challenges and Opportunities in the Mutational Analysis of Cancer Genomes by David Wheeler, Baylor College of Medicine. The talk was about the progress and challenges in applying cancer genome sequencing methods to personalized treatment of cancer.

Number of participants: I would estimate a few hundred.

Social events: There were beverages and snacks offered at the end of the two first conference days. There was no official conference dinner, however.

Touristic impressions: The conference was held at the Austin Convention Center in Downtown Austin. Austin is a large city with some 840000 inhabitants, but does not feel overly large. Close to the convention center and the surrounding hotels is the 6th Street entertainment district, with its large number of restaurants and bars. During the conference the weather was unfortunately quite cold and windy most of the time (except for the first day, when temperatures exceeded 25C), so exploration of the nearby recreational areas was unfortunately left out.

TUCS GP travel report: Lero by Jose Teixeira 

Full name of the event: Research visit to Lero 2013

Lero is the excellence research centre in Software Engineering in Ireland. I could visit and collaborate with Lero researchers for four months at University of Limerick.

Place and date: Ireland, August – December, 2013

Type of event: Research visit

The scientific profile of the event: Within first week, I been invited to present my research within Lero. A few authors manifested interest for collaboration. Few of the Lero researcher been involved in reading, commenting and reviewing my research papers. Also areas for future collaboration were identified.

Touristic impressions: Ireland is beautiful. Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula were the best visited spots.

Learning diary: 75limerick.wordpress.com – Capture my day to day learning in the public domain blog.

Key contacts established:

Lorain Morgan, University of Cork

Andreas Pleuss, Limerick University

Sarah Beecham, Limerick University

Liliana Pascale, Limerick University

Key contacts re-established:

John Noll, Limerick University

Klaas-jan Stol, Limerick University

Possible academic research topics (inputed on the event):

Social-Network-Analysis visual mining of source-code version-control-systems, as a Decision Support System in software development. With Sarah Beecham, Andreas Pleuss and Bitergia (Spanish firm).

Digital photos forensics in the era of social-networked services and applications. With Liliana Pascale.

The five dimensions of openness in mobile ecosystems. With John Noll, Klaas-jan Stol and Brian Fitzgerald.

Open-coopetition. With Tingting Lin.

Possible entrepreneurship ventures (inspired on the event):

A service based on digital photos forensics expertise.

TUCS GP travel report: The Successful Qualitative Ph.D. 2013 by Jose Teixeira

Full name of the event: The Successful Qualitative Ph.D. – A Research Training Workshop – A Qualitative Methodology Course for KATAJA (The Finnish Doctoral Program in Business Studies)

Place and date: Helsinki, Finland, May 20th – 24th, 2013

Type of event: Kataja methodology course

The scientific profile of the event: The course consisted in a mixture of an individual detailed discussion with the workshop leader, brief practical exercises, lectures, student-led seminars based on prescribed reading, student presentations, group assigments.

Number of participants: 21

Learning diary: Key lessons learned:

Focus on rich descriptions.

Do not be judgmental within research design.

Research question is how we justify our our approach

Differences between research aim, goal and research objectives.

Synecdoches and Emic meanings

The importance of Theoretical sampling ... Convenience sampling

The Hawthorne effect and the power of natural occurring data

Principle of Eisemberg. Better your measurement .. worst will be the effect

Being ready for “If I would do my research again ... what would I do different?”. It worked well, I would just do it faster and leverage more my software dev skills.

Key contacts established: Anne Murcott – University of Nottingham

Possible academic research topics (inputed on the event):

Combining ethnography observations with data TCP_dump, on how people use mobile phone devices. Observations at student cafeterias with WIFI access.

Studying the 3D printing industry from Internet forums. Driven by Arduino open-hardware tech-talk and NASA grant for 3D printed food. Development of a theory of new industry creation, using Actor-Network-Theory lenses. To develop with Anne Murcott, at least she finds to topic really really interesting. What is the role of open-source in the emergence of the 3D printing industry?

TUCS GP travel report: Doctoral Seminar on Qualitative Business Research 2013 by Jose Teixeira

Full name of the event: EDEN+KATAJA Doctoral Seminar on Qualitative Business Research

Place and date: Brussels, Belgium, May 6th – 9th, 2013

Type of event: Doctoral training. KATAJA methodology course

The scientific profile of the event: Excellent qualitative research seminar organized by EDEN+KATAJA.

Number of participants: Circa 30

Social events: A evening dinner

Touristic impressions: Brussels have very beautiful parks.

Learning diary: For pre-assigment, I needed to review a doctoral dissertation by ULLA HYTTI 2003 and read a selected methodological book. There was an oral examination on the book. Many individual and group assignments were conducted in qualitative data analysis during the seminar days. A detailed learning diary and a feedback letter were the two post-assigments.

Key learning: In research start by what and how, delay the why.

Key contacts established:

Päivi Eriksson, University of Eastern Finland

Anne Kovalainen, University of Turku

David Silverman, University of London

TUCS GP travel report: OSS 2013 by Jose Teixeira

Full name of the event: 9th International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2013)

Place and date: Coper-Capodistria, Slovenia, June 25th – 28th, 2013

Type of event: Conference (IFIP Working Group on Open Source Software – IFIP WG 2.13)

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: Is the number one conference addressing the open-source research topic both from computer-science, software engendering and information systems perspectives. Started as a result of an EU project on open-source software research. Some of the “big” names in open-source research from EU, USA and Japan were present. This year, Social Network Analysis research addressing the open-source software phenomena emerged.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: Community Dynamics in Open Source Software Projects: Aging and Social Reshaping by Anna Hannemann and Ralf Klamma.

Number of participants: Circa 80 participants including 10 local business practitioners selected to attend the conference.

Social events: Missed the evening social events. For my unpleasant sunrise, doctoral students should pay 50€ to attend the dinners/social gatherings. Did not attend the events.

Touristic impressions: It's a Slovenian low-cost beach tourism destination. Interesting from people interested in Sailing and Sea-food.

Learning diary: Was important to be aware of the Open governance index, and the Lyon Silk Mills story for my research.

Key contacts established:

Anna Hannemann from Aachen University, Germany

Gregorio Robles from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain

Key contacts re-established:

Tommi Mikkonen Tampere University of Technology, Finland

Björn Lundell University of Skövde, Sweden

Alberto Sillitti from Free university of Bozen, Italy

Klaas-Jan Stol, Lero, Ireland

Björn Lundell, University of Skövde, Sweden

Adina Barham, Hitotsubashi University, Japan

Presentations capturing most interest (marked to read):

Keynote talk: Stephane Ribas – Inria – Presenting the Lyon silk factories story, a story where openness beaten intellectual property rights.

Community Dynamics in Open Source Software Projects: Aging and Social Reshaping by Anna Hannemann and Ralf Klamma

The MySQL and MariaDB Story by Monty - Michael Widenius, Monty Program Ab (Keynote speak)

Possible academic research topics (input on the event): Development of a more unified framework for measuring openness in an ecosystems setting. Bridging open-source licensing with the open-governance index.

TUCS GP travel report: Bled eConference 2013 by  Jose Teixeira

Full name of the event: 26th Bled eConference

Place and date: Bled, Slovenia, June 9th – 13th, 2013

Type of event: Conference on all aspects of “e”: e-commerce, e-business

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: Bled eConference attracts speakers and delegates from business, government, information technology providers and universities and is the major venue for researchers working in all aspects of “e”. Easy to spot famous people within academia but also a lot of participants from public administration often representing government bodies. A good place to present research on e-government and e-business.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: “Reframing Co-creation for Mobile Living Labs: The Mobile Value Core”. I liked the presentation, it warn me for the weaknesses of doing research by Living Labs manners.

Number of participants: Circa 120 participants

Social events: 1 evening social events. Missed it by arriving to late.

Touristic impressions: Bled is a great city. Balkans food also good.

Key contacts established:

Jari Salo – Oulu Business School, Finland

Artur Lugmayr - Tampere University of Technology, Finland

Heinz Dreher - Curtin Business School, Australia

Doug Vogel - City University of Hong Kong

Key contacts re-established: Sudha Ram – University of Arizona

TUCS GP travel report: TU Delft by Eyal Eshet

Full name of the event: Research visit to TU Delft

Place and date: TU Delft, The Netherlands, September 15th – October 13th, 2013

Purpose: Collection of study material and research collaboration

The scientific perspective of the visit:

As part of my research project, I conduct interviews with mobile practitioners in Netherlands and Finland. In this one-month research visit I carried out 25 interviews with practitioners in the Netherlands, particularly UX designers, interaction designers, business developers, and software developers. I visited large, medium, and small companies, including the three largest banks in the Netherlands and big media publishers.

When not travelling to companies, I worked at TU Delft, department of Technology, Policy, and Management, mainly focusing on a collaborative journal paper with a local researcher.

Touristic impressions on Delft and its surroundings:

Delft is located between Rotterdam and The Hague, about 45 minutes by train from Schiphol airport. The town center is typical Dutch with many canals and postcard-like streets. Several hotels are located in the center and are within walking distance from the university. The town is known for its University of Technology, the artist Johannes Vermeer, and the bluish Delft pottery that became a Dutch institute.

The Hague is well known as the Peace city with headquarters of international organizations, such as the International Court of Justice (UN) and the 2013 Peace Nobel prize awarded Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Scheveningen is a seaside district of The Hague, most known for the long sandy beach, pier, and touristic promenade along the shoreline.

Other practical information:

During my one-month visit, I stayed at a flat in Rijswijk, which is about 10 minutes by tram from Delft. The flat was rented from a nice couple through the social renting site AirBnB. For the time period, it was significantly cheaper than any hotel, included extra facilities like a fully functional kitchen, and you also get to know local people and the local culture. Their hospitality was superb.

I collected many hours on the Dutch railway system when travelling to companies. The Dutch train network was very accurate and helpful. In the Netherlands, there is an all-inclusive card that allows travelling in all types of public transportation throughout the whole country. It turned out to be very useful, once you learn and remember to use it both to check in and check out.

TUCS GP travel report: DSD 2013 by Syed Asad Hassan Jafri

Full name of the event: Euromicro conference on Digital System Design (DS)

Place and date: Santander, Spain, September 4th – 6th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: Established in 1973, Euromicro is an international scientific, engineering and educational organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and applications of Information Technology. The Euromicro conference series is known worldwide for its scientific quality. In 2013 its main event will took place in Santander -- two major collocated conferences (SEAA and DSD) shaping the fields of software engineering and digital system design.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I think that the most enlightening presentation was the keynote by Ian Phillips titled “computing platforms for XXI centuary”

Number of participants: approx (300-400)

Social events: There were two free events (i) Welcome from the mayor (ii) visit of the e-city main server.

Touristic impressions: Santander is an e-city. It was a very modern Place. People were friendly. Nice place to visit.

TUCS GP travel report: SSoC 2013 by Syed Mohammad Asad Hassan Jafri

Full name of the event: International Symposium on System-on-Chip 2013

Place and date: Tampere, Finland, October 23rd – 24th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: SoC is an annual symposium held at Tampere, Finland - The SoC City. It builds on the tradition of a series of SoC events organized annually since 1999. The mission of SoC is to provide a forum that is fully and comprehensively dedicated to SoC issues.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: I think that the most enlightening presentation was the keynote: ”Challenges for Electronics Design in the Nano-Scale” by Yehea Ismail

Number of participants: approx (60)

Social events: There were one free event: Dinner at the Palace

Touristic impressions: The conference venue “Tampere Hall” was very beautiful and majestic building.

TUCS GP travel report: UCAml 2013 by Natalia Diaz Rodriguez

Full name of the event: 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing ä Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2013)

Place and date: Guanacaste, Costa Rica, December 2nd – 6th, 2013

Type of event: Conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event:

The conference was organized in conjunction with:

5th International Work-conference on Ambient Assisted Living (IWAAL 2013)

6th Latin American Conference on Human Computer Interaction (CLIHC 2013)

Therefore, ubiquitous computing was the common topic together with a lot of assistive technology, especially for active ageing scenarios, which is a hot topic today, as well as human computer interaction. A lot of similar works to mine used ontologies as context-modelling tools and rehabilitation as common application topic.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic:

I would highlight:

Handling displacement effects in on-body sensor-based activity recognition. Oresti Baños, Miguel Damas, Héctor Pomares and Ignacio Rojas. This presentation from university of Granada won the IWAAL best paper award.

Application of a Cluster-Based Classifier Ensemble to Activity Recognition in Smart Homes. Anna Jurek, Yaxin Bi, Chris Nugent and Shengli Wu

Detecting Changes in Elderly's Mobility Using Inactivity Profiles (SP). Rainer Planinc and Martin Kampel

An integral medicine taking solution for mild and moderate Alzheimer Patients. Gabriel Urzaiz, Eric Murillo, Sergio Arjona, Ramon Hervas, Jesus Fontecha and Jose Bravo

More can be seen in http://mami.uclm.es/ucamiiwaal2013/index.php/menu-program/item-iwaal-program

Number of participants: Over 100 I could say.

Social events: There was no social event, except a gala dinner. I believe this was justified because the venue was Hotel RIU Guanacaste, an all-inclusive mansion with swimming pools with bars, beach within a natural park, and even casinos, discotheque, restaurants and spa. The hotel had animation program and themed dinners and other events like a carnival. People took trips to volcanos and nature parks mainly.

Touristic impressions: From the hotel, although very isolated, one could buy excursions to natural parks, volcanos, fumaroles, waterfalls, turtle watching at night, and other beaches. The nature in Costa Rica is exuberant, volcanos, 5 or more types of rainforest, flora and fauna, and the most diverse number of species. Around the hotel beach one could see iguanas, monkeys, pelicans, snakes, colorful butterflies, manta rays and, if lucky, marine turtles coming at night to leave eggs. People were really friendly and it is said that Costa Rica is one of the happiest countries in the world, and safest in Latin-America, with no army.

TUCS GP travel report: ICNNS 2013 by Antti Hakkala

Full name of the event: International Conference on Communication and Network Security 2013 (ICCNS 2013)

Place and date: London, United Kingdom, November 16th – 17th, 2013

Type of event: Workshop of ICMV 2013 conference

My article:

The scientific profile of the event: The main event was divided into three sessions, machine vision, material science and engineering, and communication and network security. In the network security session, topics included cryptography, intrusion detection, biometrics, protocol verification and unorthodox covert networks.

Opinion on the best paper and its topic: The best presentation was given by Michael Hanspach from Fraunhofer FKIE. His topic was covert acoustic mesh networks, and their implementation. The research was cutting-edge, relevant to current events and very interesting.

Number of participants: in ICCNS session, there were 17 participants, and the whole conference had about 80 participants.

Social events: No social events per se, the conference was very businesslike. The dinner was just a dinner in the hotel restaurant.

Touristic impressions: Well, London is London. There probably is nothing you can’t find there that isn’t worth finding (except sunny weather).

Vacancy: Innovation and Entrepreneurship Coordinator

Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) is a cornerstone component in all EIT ICT Labs education programmes. EIT ICT Labs currently seeks an I&E coordinator, to secure continued convergence and a further raised quality of our I&E course modules. The coordinator will create a strong relation to the EIT ICT Labs partner universities and connect to the other EIT ICT Labs business related activities. Place of employment will be at an EIT ICT Labs partner office or at one of the EIT ICT Labs Co-Location Centres (Berlin, Eindhoven, Helsinki, London, Paris, Stockholm, Trento).

More information: http://www.eitictlabs.eu/fileadmin/files/CLC-Ehv/IE_coordinator_140108.pdf

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