Official viewpoints
Timo Alanko (born 1941) has the M.Sc. degree in mathematics (1964) and the Ph.D. degree in computer science (1983), both from the University of Helsinki.
From 1964 to 1967 he worked at Nokia Electronics, Helsinki. Since 1968 he has been employed by the University of Helsinki in the Department of Computer Science. First as a research and teaching assistant and later as a lecturer; since 1983 acting in various professorships. The academic year 1987 – 1988 he spent as a visiting professor at the University of Tampere.
At the department, his main responsibilities in research and education have been in the areas of operating systems, distributed systems and data communication, and performance analysis. He has been the project leader or a senior researcher in several national research projects in the area of distributed systems and mobile wireless computing.
He has supervised three Ph.D. theses and about 200 M.Sc. theses.
From 1999 to 2001 he was the head of the Department of Computer Science and 2001 – 2003 the leader of the Distributed Systems and Data Communications section at the department.
In the years 1992 – 1997 he was a member of faculty council of the Faculty of Science. In 1987 – 1988 he was a member of the executive committee of the Finnish Information Processing Association, in 1997 – 1999 a member of board of the Finnish Union of University Lecturers, and in 2001 – 2002 a member of board of the International Association “Top Universities e-Learning International Program” (Brussels).
He is member of the Finnish Society of Computer Science, ACM, and IEEE/Computer Society.
In 2002 he received the degree of Dr. hc. from the University of Petrozavodsk.
For Timo Alanko’s publicly available scientific contributions, see the list at ResearchGate.
Some less official viewpoints
Timo is married and has two children and several grandchildren. Timo lived in Munkkiniemi even before it was annexed to Helsinki. Now he lives elsewhere in Helsinki.
Timo came to university to study mathematics but when the first computer arrived at the university, Timo switched to applied mathematics. “The first machine was an IBM 1620. It had a ton of lights.”
In his fourth year of study, Seppo Mustonen asked Timo if he would like to join the Kaapelitehdas (Cable Factory, later merged with Nokia) to work on statistical programming tasks. “At that time, the central computer at Kaapelitehdas had about as much power as the first cell phones. In the middle of the room stood a cabinet, which was operated by six operators working in three shifts. In the early days, there was even a viewing area where people were invited to watch how the machine worked.” Martti Tienari was his manager there, and when the Department of Computer Science was established, he asked Time to come and work at the department.
Teaching software production started way back when Timo was in Munich during the 1972 Olympics, and the topic was still new at the time. “My teaching of operating systems began when professor Tienari sent me to a MIT summer school. The first book on the subject had just been published there.”
In the ’70s and ’80s, scientific publications were still exchanged by mail. “When I first downloaded a research report from New Zealand using FTP, it was amazing. Previously, I had to wait up to a month for a report.”
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This text was compiled by Petri Kutvonen, who admits responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies.