Short bio
Dr.tech (Phd) Mika Ylianttila is the Director of the Center for Internet Excellence research unit at the University of Oulu, and Docent* at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He is also Principal Investigator at the MediaTeam Oulu reseach group, where he previosly was vice director. He received his doctoral degree 2005, and was appointed Docent 2007. He has worked since as Professor (pro tem) and University Researcher**, and is currently working full-time at the Center for Internet Excellence research unit at the University of Oulu. He has teached courses in the areas of information networks and multimedia systems. He was in charge of Information networks master level degree program, and has supervised 70 master theses and four doctoral theses. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles on computer networking, peer-to-peer systems, mobility management, services computing and content delivery. He has been a visiting researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, and Columbia University, New York, USA. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

* In Finland, the docent title is solely an academic title for life and it is a rank between Lecturer and full Professor, i.e. it is similar to an Associate Professor according to the American universities.

** University Reseacher is a position in the University of Oulu salary system, which signifies senior researcher status aiming at tenure track in teaching and research, and seeking external funding to support research team.

Research
He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles on computer networking, peer-to-peer systems, mobility management, services computing and content delivery. In general, research is focused on software engineering and multimedia communication in mobile and ubiquitous information network systems. Computer networking research considers overlays, social, machine-to-machine and peer-to-peer networks, as well as content delivery and services computing. Computer networking research considers overlays, social, machine-to-machine and peer-to-peer networks, as well as content delivery and services computing. Current research topics include content distribution and delivery techniques, service composition and service provisioning, context-aware services, mobile peer-to-peer (e.g. P2P-SIP) protocols, load balancing and energy-efficiency, and linking that with analysis of user experience. Reseach projects include various national and pan-european project types, with visiting researchers to USA, Europe and Asia. He has been a visiting researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, and Columbia University, New York, USA.

Education
Dr. Ylianttila received his M.Sc. degree in electrical and information engineering from the University of Oulu, Finland, in 1998; Licentiate of Technology degree in 2001, and Doctor of Technology (PhD) degree in 2005, respectively. In his doctoral thesis, supervised mainly by prof. Kaveh Pahlavan, he addressed vertical mobility management and handoff in heterogeneous wireless IP networks.

Career development
He started his research career at the Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC) and Telecommunication Laboratory, University of Oulu, in 1997, and worked there till 2002. CWC is one the internationally most well known research groups in wireless communications in Finland, employing today more than 100 researchers, and can be ranked as one of the leading research institutes globally in the area of wireless communications. He did his diploma thesis with prof. Savo Glisic as the supervisor 1998, and then started to work in project called Wireless LAN for UMTS, at time when Dr. Jaakko Talvitie was the director of CWC (later director at Elektrobit). He then visited several times Center for Wireless Information Network Studies (CWINS) reserch laboratory, led by prof. Pahlavan at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, USA, who became the main supervisor of the doctoral studies. He also worked closely with prof. Petri Mähönen, research professor at VTT and CWC at the time, who now is the head of the Institute for Networked Systems, RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Collaboration included also prof. Matti Latva-aho, the head of CWC, and prof. Pentti Leppänen the head of telecommunication laboratory, the latter being also co-supervisor in his doctoral thesis.

Later Dr. Ylianttila focused more towards computer science and engineering type of research problems, especially related to mobile middleware and mobile computing, as he went to work at MediaTeam Oulu research group September 2002, while continuing working with the doctoral thesis topic with prof. Pahlavan and close colleque at the time, Dr. Juha-Pekka Mäkelä. Always being working in combining communications (networking) and information engineering, he then started to work as project manager at MediaTeam, which is a multidisciplinary research group conducting research on the features, use, and applications of multimedia and digital media types in information and communication systems. MediaTeam's research combines different areas of information and telecommunications technology, with a special focus on mobility and wireless features as well as future generations of communication technology. After having the doctoral degree 2005, he soon started to take care of professorship (previously held by prof. Jaakko Sauvola, director at Nokia and founder and director of MediaTeam), and related Information Networks degree program, at the Information Processing laboratory, at the Department of Electrical and Information engineering, University of Oulu. He was nominated in 2007 Docent in Information Engineering, especially Information Network Systems at the Computer Science and Engineering laboratory and in 2009 the Associate Director of the MediaTeam Oulu research group at the University of Oulu, Finland. In Fall 2011 he went to Center for Internet Excellence as Scientific Director, and was nominated as the Director from 1.2.2012 onwards.

He has worked constantly with new national and international ICT project initiatives, such as in European Union Framework Programme FP6 project mGain (Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture), and in several ITEA2 EUREKA projects (Cam4home - Collaborative Aggregated Multimedia for Digital Home, ExpeShare - Experience Sharing in Mobile Peer Communities, and ACDC - Adaptive Content Delivery Cluster), in collaboration with several companies such as Nokia, LM Ericsson, Electrobit, TeliaSonera, IBM, Sanoma, EXFO Nethawk, Sesca, Sofia Digital, Swelcom, Anvia, Movial, Kutalab, Brieftec, all of which hold office in Finland, and in addition with several other companies and research institutes in France, Spain and other European countries. At national level he has received severeal times funding from TEKES, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, and participated to two TIVIT programs (called Next Media and Future Internet), which is one the Finnish Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation (suom. SHOK, Strategisen huippuosaamisen keskittymät). He was the principal investigator in DECICOM (Decentralized Inter-Service Communications), in which P2P networking and communication was studied with prototype implemenations (e.g., P2PSIP), was a joint national project with Aalto university, Department of Communication (prof. Raimo Kantola and prof. Heikki Hämmäinen), LM Ericsson, Nokia and EXFO Nethawk. He has collaborated a lot with VTT, the technical research centre of Finland, in the beforementioned international projects, as well as supervising several on-going doctoral thesis works.

He has been also participating to standardization activities at IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) since IETF47 meeting at March 2000 in Adelaine, Australia, with proposals and industrial collaboration. Dr. Ylianttila was the vice chairman of IEEE Finland section 2006-2007, and the Chairman 2008-2009, being also then IEEE R8 committee member. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Teaching
He is teaching courses in the areas of information networks and multimedia systems. He was appointed as Docent in Information Engineering and Information Network Systems at the Computer Science and Engineering laboratory 2007. "In Finland, the docent title is solely an academic title for life and it is a rank between Lecturer and full Professor, i.e. it is similar to an Associate Professor according to the American universities." [Wikipedia]. He has worked as Professor (pro tem) and University Researcher, a position which signifies senior researcher status aiming at tenure track in teaching and research, and seeking external funding to support research team. He was in charge of Information networks master level degree program, and has supervised 70 masters (diploma) thesis and 4 doctoral thesis, Otso Kassinen, Timo Koskela, Jiehan Zhou (co-supervised with prof. Jukka Riekki) and Zhonghong Ou, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Aalto University, since 2006. His students have received graduate school funding from GETA (Timo Koskela) and Infotech Oulu (Zhonghong Ou, Otso Kassinen, Erkki Harjula, Timo Koskela). He is also supervising the doctoral thesis works of Erkki Harjula, Meirong Liu, Markus Luoto (VTT), Esa Piri (VTT), Daniel Pakkala (VTT), Jyri Toivonen (VTT) and Jon Duran (VTT). He is jointly supervising the doctoral thesis works of Jani Pellikka at CWC with prof. Andrei Gurtov. He has reviewed or opponented three doctoral dissertations (Jani Puttonen, Mehdi Mani, Matti Koivisto).

Statistics 2004-2011 (8 years)


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