Matti Nelimarkka

A social scientist with a touch of technology.

I'm a long haired strange guy, who studied political science and is now studying computer science at the University of Helsinki. My interest include online media. mobile systems and social services, from softer side. As an example, I've studied social networks and political uses of the Internet.

Currently I'm working in Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. My days pass while I sitting next to my computer and think really hard. I do programming, data-analysis, writing, ... all sorts of generic things.

I've been previously working in Nokia Corporation, and engaged in teacher assistant tasks both in Aalto University and University of Helsinki. My long term goal is to get few cats to enlight my life.

Contact

Research: matti.nelimarkka@hiit.fi
Teaching at Aalto University: matti.nelimarkka@aalto.fi
Teaching at University of Helsinki: matti.nelimarkka@cs.helsinki.fi
Other: matti.nelimarkka@alumni.helsinki.fi
IRC: matnel @ ircnet
Skype: mattinelimarkka

Online presence

That I really use:
Facebook

That I have:
Google+
Twitter

Work experience

Nokia Corporation

I started at Nokia in 2004 to develop serious games for mobile devices. These games usually had a multiuser aspect in them and they used contextual computing to make those services more interesting. This position was a part-time trainee position in Nokia Research Center's unit focusing on high-school collaboration, and ended in 2006.

I rejoined the same unit in 2007 as an instructor for students. I mentored and managed projects students were working, conducted my own research work and build collaboration relations within Nokia. Some of the projects I worked on included mobile education, sensor technologies development and social media services, both for mobile and for the desktop. Our ways of working focused on developing prototypes and due to most of the workforce in unit being high-school students, mentoring and education was an important aspect of every day work. I resigned in 2011.

Since 2010 I helped Nokia's social relations team in child online safety, including own research, review and examination of existing research and commenting on policy documents. This collaboration has continued even after my resignation, as Nokia asked me to join a research project in this area.

Helsinki Institute for Information Technology

I've worked in HIIT during summers 2009 and 2010 as research assistant. I'm currently conducting my non-military service in HIIT.

My work include programming research prototypes of mobile services and developing methods for large scale data processing. I've also participated in the adoption of real-time technologies in HIIT and examined the limits of web technologies.

In more research side, I've been involved in study of playfullness and gamification, use of social media services - especially from social networks point of view. My personal focus has been in the political use of the Internet, such as e-participation.

Aalto University and University of Helsinki

Teacher assistance in basic level programming courses at the Aalto University. The courses were held in Java and later Python and the work included mentoring students, grading project assigments and helding exercise groups. Based on my idea, the programming courses held first official exercise sessions over IRC.

In University of Helsinki, I TAed social science IT courses, such as statistical computing (SPSS) and web publishing. I will also TA in course on Human Computer Interaction.

Education

Master of Social Science

I studied at the University of Helsinki Faculty of Social Sciences, where I majored in political science. Especially my focus was in political institutions, new forms of participation and research methodologies.
My thesis focused in the evolution of online participation of ten non-govermental organizations.
Read my thesis in Finnish.

Bachelor of Social Science

I studied at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Science. My major was political science and two minors, one in computer science and the other in statistics.
My thesis focused in the goverment officials' views on e-participation and was later published in Hallinnon Tutkimus, a Finnish journal for administration research.
Read my original thesis and the rewritten journal paper, both in Finnish.

Bachelor of Science [ongoing]

To further my studies in computing, I'm currently studying for Bacherlor's degree in computer science. I study at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Science.

Research interests

My current research is happening around...

Papers and presentations

Online and mobile services

  • Measuring Social Relations: Case OtaSizzle (with Juuso Karikoski)
    2010 IEEE Second International Conference on Social Computing
  • Measuring social relations with multiple datasets (with Juuso Karikoski)
    International Journal of Social Computing and Cyber-Physical Systems 1:2011
  • Mobile Family Interaction: How to use mobile technology to bring trust, safety and wellbeing into families (with Jofish Kaye, Pekka Isosomppi, Sini Vartiainen and Riitta Kauppinen)
    Workshop at the Mobile HCI 2011
  • Mobility with MUPE - Developer's Viewpoint
    Assembly demoscene seminars 2006

Politics and new media

  • Viranomaiset ja sähköinen kansalaisosallistuminen - asiantuntijahaastatteluiden perustee$ Hallinnon Tutkimus 2:2011
  • Ubiquitous Open Participation Platform - Yet Another Push for Deliberative Democracy
    Open 2009
  • An experimental case study of ubiquitous computing in citizen participation
    Politiikan tutkimuksen päivät 2010
  • Ubiquitous participation - the next step forward?
    mLife Conferences 2010
  • The Use of Ubiquitous Media in Politics - How ubiquitous life effects into political life today and what might happen in the future Mindtrek 2008

Teaching and learning

  • Wireless Education Platform - an Open Source Way to Create Mobile Education (with Riku Suomela)
    Computers and Advance Technology in Education 2007
  • MUPE as a Rapid Development Architecture - Case Wireless Education Platform (with Mika Laitinen and Vik Nuckchady)
    The Nordic Conference of Serious Games 2008

Software