Tenured Professors’ Installation Talks

Mario Di Francesco received his Ph.D. degree in information engineering from the University of Pisa in 2009. After graduation, he was a research associate at the University of Texas at Arlington (2009–2011) and a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University (2012–2013). He was appointed Assistant Professor at Aalto University in August 2013. He was a visiting associate research scholar with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University between December 2015 and April 2016.

Mario's research targets network systems, from wireless communication to mobile and distributed computing, with emphasis on energy efficiency. His current focus areas include the Internet of Things (IoT), pervasive computing, and mobile networking. His research on these themes has been acknowledged by several recognitions in the last few years: best paper awards in the UbiComp 2014 and IoT 2015 conferences; a Google IoT Technology Research Award. He received a School of Science teaching award in 2017. He has obtained substantial funding from the Academy of Finland as both single principal investigator and consortium leader.

Mario Di Francesco has been appointed Professor of software systems and technology at the Aalto University School of Science on 27 November 2017.

Pekka Malo is an Associate Professor of Statistics in the Department of Information and Service Management at Aalto University School of Business, Finland. He has a PhD degree in quantitative methods and M.Sc degree in finance from Helsinki School of Economics along with M.Sc. degree in mathematics from University of Helsinki. 

Before joining the department he worked as a business simulation developer at Cesim and head of research at Fosta Consulting. He has also worked as a visiting scholar at Michigan State University in the Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering. His research interests include business analytics, computational statistics, machine learning, optimization and evolutionary computation, and their applications to marketing, finance, and healthcare.

Pekka Malo has been appointed Professor of statistics at the Aalto University School of Business on 29 November 2018.

Sofia Pantouvaki (born in Greece) is a scenographer (MA, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UAL, 1997), specialised in design for opera and ballet at La Scala, Milan (1996). She holds a PhD Degree in Scenography (2008) from the University of the Arts London. Pantouvaki has been a Post-doctoral Research Fellow (Greek State Scholarship Foundation, 2010–2011) and has taught at the Technological Educational Institution of Athens (2001–2012), University of the Peloponnese (2006–2012), Harokopion University (2008–2012) and as guest lecturer at universities in Europe, Northern and Latin America, Australia and Asia. Since 2012, she has been Professor of Costume Design at Aalto University.

Her design credits include over 80 theatre, film, opera and dance productions in European venues and curation of many international projects. Her design work has been exhibited in three continents, including at World Stage Design 2017. She is Editor of the academic journal Studies in Costume and Performance; Vice-Head for Research, OISTAT/Costume; Chair, Critical Costume; and Co-Convener, IFTR Scenography Working Group. She was the WSD2013 Curator for Costume Design; Associate Curator, Costume in Action; and Co-Curator of the PQ15 Finnish Student exhibit (Gold Medal PQ15). Pantouvaki founded the Costume in Focus research group and led the Academy of Finland funded project ‘Costume Methodologies’ (2014–2018). She lectures, supervises PhDs and publishes internationally.

Sofia Pantouvaki has been appointed Professor of costume design for theatre and film at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture on 29 November 2018.

Jussi Rintanen studied computer science at Helsinki University of Technology where he obtained his Doctor of Technology degree in 1997. He worked as a project researcher at Universität Ulm from 1997 until 1999, and held an assistant professor (scientific assistant) position at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg from 1999 to 2005. From 2006 until 2011 he was a Principal Researcher at National ICT Australia and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Australian National University, in Canberra, Australia. Since 2012 he has worked at the Computer Science department of Aalto University.

Prof. Rintanen's research interests cover a broad range of topics in artificial intelligence and computer science, including automated reasoning and constraint programming; combinatorial search; as well as automated decision-making and planning. His main interest in the recent years has been the creation of highly automated methods for software production.

Jussi Rintanen has been appointed Professor of artificial intelligence at the Aalto University School of Science on 29 August 2018.

Hong-Linh Truong completed his doctoral studies at TU Wien, Austria, while working as a fulltime researcher at University of Vienna. His doctoral thesis developed novel techniques for understanding performance of large-scale applications and systems. He earned his Dr.techn. (Doctor in Technical Sciences) in Computer Science in 2005 from TU Wien. After spending two post-doctoral years in University of Innsbruck, in 2007, he returned to Vienna to work as a senior scientist and then an assistant professor at the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien. He completed his Habilitation thesis On Quality Issues in Complex Service-oriented Systems and received his Habilitation ("venia docendi") in 2013 in Practical Computer Science from TU Wien, entailing him to a Privatdozent position at TU Wien.  

Truong has taught topics of Distributed Systems Technologies and Advanced Services Engineering. He has been a visiting scholar in leading institutes in Asia, Europe and US. He and his team have received many ‘best paper’ awards in leading scientific venues, like ICSOC and CAiSE. He has also advised companies to build advanced systems and services of IoT, cloud computing and big data.

Hong-Linh Truong has been appointed Professor of software engineering at the Aalto University School of Science on 30 May 2018.