Yesterday we had the poster session for our European IVVES project at the university. Very good discussion about AI and testing – and of ML engineering in general. The work still continues in https://ivves.eu/ and https://iml4e.org/ projects.

IVVES https://ivves.eu/ is one of the major machine learning engineering projects we are running. Come and see the key results of the project. No registration, just walk into the University of Helsinki main building (Unioninkatu 34), grab a cup of coffee, walk around, and chat with the experts presenting the posters.

Further details here: IVVES_Poster_Session_Invitation

Quantum computing is a hot topic. The big question is how do we map real-life problems to quantum computers. A new kind of thinking is needed for the creation of quantum software. A successful approach by one of our doctoral researchers Valter Uotila
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/quantum-technology/new-applications-quantum-computing-sought-hackathons.

We would be welcome new industrial use cases or challenges. 

Last week we had project meetings on two of our European machine learning engineering projects IML4E and VesselAI. It was amazingly useful to meet the partners face to face after all the video conferences we have had during covid times. Lots of new ideas, clarity of collaboration, and fun being together. Now there is even more potential for useful work on bringing AI into real use. 

Green ICT is not a new concept. However, for many reasons it has recently started attracting increasingly both software researchers, industrial software companies and public sector IT organizations. In particular, since many organizations and industrial sectors have announced their targets to become carbon neutral by 2030 or even sooner, there are clear motives and interests to develop and utilize green ICT. In general, sustainability goals call for green ICT.

So what is actually “green ICT” — and, conversely, what is then perhaps not so “green”? There are many aspects of “green” and, consequently, different definitions emphasizing different features of sustainability. In general, resource consumption (especially energy efficiency) is addressed. In current software systems environments, dependencies on various platforms and infrastructures (networks, data centers) make it complicated to realize the actual net effects. An apparently short piece of source code may actually require a lot more — thus being less “green”.

Nowadays ICT and software are increasingly utilized in most every industrial sector in many different ways. It has even been said that all companies are becoming “software companies”. In many cases, ICT is an enabling technology for “greening”. For example various equipment manufactures can embed software systems into their products to optimize energy consumption. Product development companies can use software tools to analyze the products under development to design-for-green.

Ultimately, a combination of utilizing green ICT for greening could be ideal. In such constellations, the ICT solution itself would not be a “problem” and it would provide solution possibilities to sustainability problems.

For us as software engineering researchers, the aforementioned developments introduce many intriguing research problems and aims:

• How to specify “green” software products and systems?
• How to design and develop them?
• How to measure the products and their development with respect to “green”?
  

and

• How to identify ICT opportunities for greening in different (non-ICT) industry sectors and application domains?

Yesterday we launched a MOOC on AI in Society. It is a result of interdisciplinary work involving computer scientists, social scientists, philosophers, law researchers, and cognitive scientists from three universities: the University of Helsinki, Edinburgh, and Paris 1.

The MOOC aims to be an introduction to AI and its impact with a strong emphasis on the intersection between AI and other fields, such as ethics, healthcare, politics, and law. There is a need to understand how AI is changing the landscape of different sectors and the effects it has across societies. With this knowledge, it is possible to understand the potential that AI has.

The MOOC has a modular structure and additional modules e.g. on AI and democracy, robotics, and health are planned to be released later this year.

Students can study at their own pace and schedule, as well as select the optional modules based on their interests. The MOOC is available at https://ai-in-society.mooc.fi/

As posted earlier, we conducted a survey round in October–November 2020 including question items about the impacts of the pandemic and its potential relations to agility. We have now analyzed those results and published a new research paper in the XP 2021 workshop:

Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic for Software Development in Nordic Companies – Agility Helps to Respond

The key findings showed that although the impacts have mostly been negative, it has not been all so. The pandemic has impacted different companies differently both in negative and positive ways. The majority of the responses indicated that agility has helped to respond to the situation.


We are currently preparing another survey round to be conducted by the end of 2021. In fact, perhaps unevenly, the pandemic is (still) affecting many companies, so a longitudinal study is warranted.

For more information about the Nordic Agile Survey, see here.

The Department of Computer Science at the Faculty of Science of the University of Helsinki invites applications for a

PROFESSOR OR ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

aiming to strengthen research areas in computer science at the university.

Position description
We are looking for a new professor or assistant/associate professor to carry out research into the field of software engineering.

The person to be chosen must have a strong scientific track record in the field of software engineering evidenced by publications in top tier forums of the field. The University of Helsinki and the Department of Computer Science offer excellent potential collaborators in the relevant areas, such as data science and other disciplines of different faculties of the university.

The appointee is expected to conduct research on an internationally high level. We expect a strong network of international and interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration. In addition, strong record in empirical software engineering and particularly in close industrial collaboration is considered a significant advantage. The teaching area of the position is software engineering. The person chosen for the position is expected to teach and develop teaching particularly in the Master’s Programme in Computer Science and potentially also in the Bachelor Programme in Computer Science and the Bachelor’s Programme in Science. In addition, the appointee will participate in doctoral education at the Department of Computer Science, collaborate with other groups in the department, acquire research funding for their research group, and participate in the interaction between science and society at large.

More information: https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/open-positions/professor-or-assistantassociate-professor-in-software-engineering