The new FiDiPro research projects will employ three young talented researchers in Finland as FiDiPro Fellow Researchers and two internationally recognised professors as FiDiPro Professors. The researchers will work at Aalto University, the Lappeenranta University of Technology, the University of Oulu and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

“The FiDiPro Fellow programme, which targets promising young researchers, has become increasingly popular. We hope that the programme will enable close, long-term cooperation between outstanding Finnish and international research groups,” says Veli-Pekka Saarnivaara, Director General of Tekes.

Vassilis Kostakos is an Assistant Professor in the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute at the University of Madeira, and holds an adjunct faculty appointment at Carnegie Mellon University. His Ubiquitous Computing research focuses on making interactive technology smarter, easier and safer to use, and developing novel sensing techniques for urban transport, and modelling of city-scale mobility.

Urban Flows and Networks project
The objective of the project is to utilize the data produced by Oulu's UPI (Urban Pervasive Infrastructure) and other sources for modeling and exploiting urban flows and networks. This data captures a rich subset of the everyday life and activities taking place in the City of Oulu.

As interactive communication technologies play an increasing role in our everyday lives, the infrastructure that supports these activities can be in important source of understanding the type, frequency and characteristics of citizen's activities. Crucially, a characteristic of these technologies is mobility, and increasingly mobility has become an important aspect of technology usage and user needs.  Hence, this project considers capturing and analyzing various types of flows and networks of everyday life in the City of Oulu. By capturing and analysing these flows and networks, our project will develop services that better fulfill Oulu's stakeholders’.

For more information: Professor Timo Ojala, Media Team, University of Oulu