International Evaluation of Finnish Computer Science

5.4. Memberships in committees and in scientific advisory boards of business companies or other similar tasks of no primarily academic nature

Give only the most important memberships and prizes.

Name	Tasks	Period
Kangasharju, Jaakko	Member, W3C's XML Binary Characterization Working Group??	May 2004 – March 2005
Kemppinen Jukka	Finnish Government / Expert	2000-2007
Mannila, Heikki	Verity Inc., Member of the Technical Advisory Board	2000-2004
Myllymäki, Petri	Ekahau Inc., Chairman of the Board of Directors	2000-2004
Myllymäki, Petri	Bayes Information Technology Inc., Member of the Board of Directors	2000-2003
Mäntylä, Martti	Otaverkko Oy, Chairman of the Board	2003-
Pitkänen, Olli	BookIT Oy, Member of the Board	2004-
Turpeinen, Marko	Tekes, Fenix technology programme, Member of the Board	2003-06
Turpeinen, Marko	Tampere University of Technology, Digital Media Institute, Member of the Board	2002-04

6. The Unit’s self-assessment

6.1 SWOT – evaluation of the Unit’s scientific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (expertise, funding, facilities, organisation; max. 2 pages).

In addition to strengths and weaknesses it is also important to assess what the present strengths or developable strengths enable in the future and what kinds of threats are related to the weaknesses.
The SWOT of the institute are summarised in the following table:

Strengths Good brand – best in Finland Good research themes that provide opportunities for top level research Highly motivated and competent multidisciplinary personnel Finnish and international networks (Helsinki School of Economics, University of Arts and Design; UC Berkeley, MIT, Tsinghua University, IIT; EU networks) Parent organisations and their competence (TKK, UH) Close relationships with industry and industry clusters (Dimes, Forum Virium) Good links with key decision-makers of research and technology policy

Weaknesses High dependency on external funding High workload of senior researchers caused by short-term funding Insufficient administrative resources Limited capability of risk taking limits the rapid launch of new activities Long-term development of research infrastructure difficult because of short-term and project-oriented funding Lack of post-doc and senior researcher positions (fellowships) limits researcher career development Finnish policies make foreign recruiting in practice difficult

Opportunities New research programmes Importance of research and technology policy is recognised by decision-makers The new university to be created by combining TKK, HSE and UIAH offers possibilities of multi-disciplinary research Strategic centers of excellence offer further opportunities New EU funding schemes (esp. ERC) Further close international collaboration by duplicating the model developed with UC Berkeley

Threats Health and sanity of key people = senior researchers Parent organisations cannot agree on the future development of HIIT Organisational havoc of new initiatives devours key person’s energy Limited added value of HIIT in the eyes of high-quality candidate groups Diminishing number of qualified students entering the universities restricts the recruiting basis of HIIT

The present strengths and visible opportunities put the institute in a very good position to develop its scientific, industrial, and societal impact also in the future.

We also believe that most of the existing weaknesses can be addressed, or that they do not constitute serious bottlenecks.
The weakness high dependency on external funding, however, will likely to remain in place, but the severity of this weakness is limited by the expected development of funding instruments (e.g., strategic research funding of TEKES, Strategic Centers of Excellence initiative) and spreading the project portfolio between different funding organisations (TEKES, Academy of Finland, EU).
The high workload of senior researchers can be relieved with more post-doc level researchers and improved administrative services. Of course, these require sufficient funding and success in recruiting the best people.
A threat that is difficult to contain is the diminishing number of qualified students entering the universities in areas relevant to HIIT. This requires joint activities of HIIT with the home universities, and the entire CS research community, to send the message to talented high school graduates that CS and IT are areas where they will be able to excel and find interesting things to do.
We do not believe that the other threats will turn out to be serious.