Research Groups of Infotech Oulu

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The research of Infotech Oulu is carried out in research groups. They mainly operate in those departments where their leaders are working. The selection of Infotech Oulu research groups is for a four-year period, and is based on external scientific evaluation of the research presented by the applicants. For the period 2006–2009, six groups were selected as full members, and three groups as associate members. Some of them are joint groups at the University of Oulu and VTT Technical Research Centre.

The following groups were selected as Infotech Oulu full members:

• Algebraic and Computational Methods in Information Science (ALCOMEIS)
• Circuits and Systems (CAS - Oulu)
• Electronics Materials, Packaging and Reliability Techniques (EMPART)
• Intelligent Systems Group (ISG)
• Machine Vision Group (MVG)
• Optoelectronics and Measurement Unit (OPME)

In addition, three groups were selected as associate members. They do not receive direct funding from Infotech Oulu, but the doctoral students in these groups can apply for graduate school positions.

• Human Interaction with Advanced Mobile Services and Intelligent Environments (INTERACT)
• MediaTeam Oulu
• Wireless Communication Systems (applied only associate status)

The main research areas of Infotech Oulu are

• electronics
• communications engineering
• computer science and information engineering

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Funding

The University of Oulu provided special funding of EUR 400 000 for Infotech Oulu in 2007. Over 80% of this was directed to the full member groups. In addition, the Infotech Oulu Graduate School obtained EUR 727 100 from the Ministry of Education towards the salaries of its graduate students working in the research groups of Infotech Oulu. In addition, the Academy of Finland granted EUR 206 000 for the years 2007–2009, EUR 59 000 from this sum was used in 2007 along with a previously granted sum of EUR 25 000. The funding was for arranging courses and travelling costs of graduate students.

The research is funded mainly externally. The total sum of annual external funding for the full members was EUR 11 million in 2007. Only about a quarter of the research work is financed by internal funding in the form of salaries of professors, assistants, etc., excluding their estimated time used for teaching. According to our statistics, in the full member research groups the person years used for research were 220, with 170 of them being funded externally and 50 internally. Total external research funding, including that for the associate members was EUR 20.9 million. The main source of financial support is Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Its proportion of our external funding is almost 40%.

The following table shows the total external funding of the research groups in 2007 with the university’s proportion in parenthesis.

 

External funding (EUR)	full members	all
Academy of Finland	1 239 000 (1 239 000)	1 791 000 (1 691 000)
Ministry of Education (graduate schools)	910 000 (910 000)	1 147 000 (1 121 000)
Tekes	4 495 000 (4 115 000)	7 755 000 (6 475 000)
other domestic public	1 463 000 (1 463 000)	1 921 000 (1 921 000)
domestic private	1 565 000 (1 215 000)	4 882 000 (2 957 000)
EU	1 224 000 (854 000)	3 132 000 (1 862 000)
other international	74 000 (74 000)	315 000 (315 000)
total	10 970 000 (9 870 000)	20 943 000 (16 343 000)

 

 

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Personnel

The number of personnel in the full member research groups of Infotech Oulu was 297 at the end of 2007. The total number of personnel, including the associate members, was 473. The number of personnel from abroad has increased to 18 percent from the total staff. The table below shows the number of personnel in different positions. The category “others” includes Master’s students, secretaries and other support staff. The number of personnel from the University of Oulu is expressed in parenthesis. About 14% of the personnel work outside the university, almost all of them at VTT. Two of the groups have an associate director from VTT.

 

Position	full members	all
Professors	28 (27)	44 (40)
other doctors	30 (27)	53 (44)
graduate students	139 (116)	257 (211)
others	100 (94)	119 (113)
total	297 (264)	473 (408)

 

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Publications

The table shows the publications from the full member research groups in 2007. During the last few years, the number of refereed international journal articles has increased significantly.