The research of Infotech Oulu is carried out in groups. The research groups mainly operate in those laboratories and departments where their directors are working. The selection of Infotech Oulu research groups is for a four-year period, and it is based on external scientific evaluation of the research presented by the applicants. For the period 2010–2013, five groups were selected as full members, and three groups as associate members. Some of them are joint groups at the University of Oulu and VTT Technical Research Centre.

The following groups were selected to Infotech Oulu as full members:

• Circuits and Systems Group (CAS - Oulu)
• Intelligent Systems Group (ISG)
• Center for Machine Vision Research (CMV), former Machine Vision Group (MVG)
• MediaTeam Oulu
• Wireless Communication Systems Group (WICS)

and as associate members:

• Biomedical Engineering Research Group (BME)
• Electronic Materials, Packaging and Reliability Techniques (EMPART)
• Human Interaction with Advanced Mobile Services and Intelligent Environments (INTERACT)

The associate members do not receive direct funding from Infotech Oulu, but the doctoral students in these groups can apply for doctoral program positions. In addition, all the groups can apply for special funding from the University of Oulu through Infotech Oulu.

Information technology is designated as one of the four focus research areas of the University of Oulu, including machine vision and ubiquitous computing, wireless communications, high-speed electronics and photonics, biomedical engineering, and information systems. The main research areas of Infotech Oulu currently are

• electronics
• communications engineering
• computer science and information engineering
•  

Infotech Oulu umbrella organization

The University of Oulu provided special funding of EUR 400 000 for Infotech Oulu in 2012. About 75% of this was directed to the support of the full member groups. For the year 2012, EUR 746 000 was granted by the Ministry of Education and Culture to the Infotech Oulu Doctoral Program for its 25 student positions. The University of Oulu granted EUR 38 000 for coordination. In addition, the Academy of Finland granted EUR 430 000 for the years 2010–2013. EUR 108 000 was awarded for the year 2012. This funding was for arranging courses given by visiting experts and for covering traveling costs of doctoral students when taking part in conferences or working abroad. This total funding was EUR 1 292 000 in 2012. During the past few years, Infotech Oulu has been able to apply for special funding from the University of Oulu (funding for infrastructure and for international recruitment of researchers). Adding this special funding, the total funding was EUR 1 750 000. The table below shows the total funding in 2012, excluding any funding that the research groups may have won in their own right.

Research groups

The research groups are mainly funded externally. The total sum of annual external funding for the full members was EUR 11.8 million in 2012. Total external research funding, including that for the associate members, was EUR 15.1 million. Only about a quarter of the research work is financed through internal funding in the form of salaries of professors, research assistants, etc., excluding their estimated time used for teaching. The main source of financial support is Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, representing almost half of our external funding.

The following table shows the total external funding of the research groups in 2012. All the funding of the full member groups is channeled through the University, whereas the total funding includes also some funding channeled through VTT. The external funding decreased slightly (by about 8%) from the previous year.

Personnel

The number of personnel in the full member research groups of Infotech Oulu was 260 at the end of 2012. The total number of personnel, including the associate members, was 357. When this is compared to the previous year, there has been practically no change. Personnel from abroad represents 31.1% of the total staff, and 33.7% of the doctoral students. The table below shows the total number of personnel in different positions. The number of professors also includes acting professors, FidiPro professors and VTT’s research professors. The number of University nominated professors participating in the activities of the groups is about 25. The category “others” includes Master’s level students, secretaries and other support staff. Almost 95% of the personnel work at the University of Oulu, and the others at VTT. Two of the groups have an associate director from VTT.

The number of the publications of the research groups in 2012 are represented in the following table.

In addition, the publications have been classified based on their quality, according to the Publication Forum Project (http://www.tsv.fi/julkaisufoorumi). The total number of  top level journal articles in 2012 is 34, leading level 43, basic level 66 and not listed 14. Corresponding figures for conference proceedings are 5 in the leading level, 97 in the basic level and 84 not listed.