General Information

Contacts | Organization | Funding | Presentation Material

---

Infotech Oulu, an umbrella organization for information technology research, was founded in 1996 at the University of Oulu. The principal goal of Infotech Oulu is to create an environment for the development of world-class research groups by advancing long-term research, researcher training, internationalism and cooperation. Close interaction between basic and applied research is seen to be necessary, but the best results can be achieved when curiosity is a driving force.

The selection of Infotech Oulu's research groups, is based on external scientific evaluation of the research. In the application for the years 2006-2009, six research groups were selected to Infotech Oulu as full members and three groups as associate members. The associate members do not get direct funding from Infotech Oulu, but the doctoral students in these groups can apply for graduate school positions. Some of the groups are jointly formed by researchers from the University of Oulu and VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland. In the general overview of the evaluation, the structure of Infotech was seen to be very efficient and especially the Graduate School activity was highly praised. The evaluators made several suggestions to develop the activities of Infotech Oulu further.

The main research fields of Infotech Oulu are

• Electronics
• Communications engineering
• Computer science and information engineering

The University of Oulu provides annyally special funding of about EUR 400 000 for Infotech Oulu. Over 80% of this is directed to the full member groups.

The research is funded mainly externally. The total sum of annual external funding for the full members was EUR 9.7 million in 2006. About one quarterof the research work is financed by internal funding in the form of salaries of professors, assistants, etc., excluding their estimated time used for teaching. Total external research funding, including also the associate members was EUR 18.9 million. The main sources are the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes), the Academy of Finland, the Ministry of Education, the European Commission and industry.

The number of personnel in the full member research groups of Infotech Oulu according to our statistics was 274 in the end of the year 2006. The total number of personnel, including the associate members, was 442. About 12% of the personnel work outside the university, most of them in VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Infotech Oulu Graduate School develops post graduate education on information technology in the university. It organizes lecture series and intensive courses. It is a part of the national graduate school system, having 25 research student positions and a coordinator position financed by the Ministry of Education. In addition, the Academy of Finland has granted funding annually for arranging courses and other costs. The school has about 220 graduate students. During 2006, the output was 23 dissertations within the research groups of the school. The number of doctoral dissertations within Infotech has grown significantly during the last few years