Tom Ahola
Senior Researcher, Architecture and System Design, Multimodal InteractionHelsinki (NRC Tampere)
Background
I have been with Nokia Research Center since the beginning of 1999. I have a Licentiate of Technology degree (1996, with honours) from Helsinki University of Technology, where I started my studies in 1987. I got my Master's degree in 1993 with honours. Previously I worked at The Metrology Research Institute, where I developed precision metrological (science of measurement) systems for maintaining the Finnish national optical wavelength standard and also contributing to international collaboration and research in the area.
My Ambitions
I'm in particular interested in signal processing and algorithms related to audio, video, sensors and measurement. I am also very skilled in electronics and have a long experience in a wide range of applications from low frequency to high frequency, analog and digital, low power to medium power and design, simulation and practical construction of prototypes. In general I'm passionate about creating technologies that give great benefit to people with a good user experience. In my work I have been involved in the development of large systems and contributed to hardware, software, algorithms and architecture design.
I feel strongly about protecting our environment. I think that our environment is not something external that can be exploited without thought but it is something essential that we need to have around us. Taking good care of our environment will give us a good quality of life. Mobile devices and services help to minimize unnecessary travel and provide you with information to help you achieve more with less energy. I'm proud to work in a company that takes the environmental issues seriously. You can find Nokia's environmental policy here: http://www.nokia.com/environment
I was researching wellness and health care issues for some time until Nokia decided to change research focus. Because the major cause for diseases and obstacle for wellness are lack of information, unawareness, wrong attitudes and lack of motivation my great ambition was to develop services and devices to provide and share information and help motivate and promote a healthy and fun way of life. I contributed to Nokia Wrist-Attached Sensor Platform, Continua Activity Monitor Specification, Nokia Sports Tracker, Nokia Step Counter and Wellness Diary among many things we did. I would like to thank everybody I had the pleasure to do collaboration with and wish you success with making the world more healthier!
Professional Activities
I now work in the Multimodal Interaction team of Nokia Research Center Tampere Lab. I have always been interested in usability issues and feel many technology products that are meant to make life easier actually cause a lot of trouble for the user. I'm particularly interested in how to improve the interaction with devices that are small and portable - how to make them as easy to use as the big old machines with all knobs very tangible and easy to use and without complex multi-level menu labyrinths as many devices today have. I'm also very much into navigation, photography, video, 3D computer graphics and radio communications (operating Radio Amateur station OH2FRM). NRC has interesting work in all of these areas and great new concepts will be available for users in the future where location, multimedia and connectivity will give a fantastic experience. An important part of my work is managing the Human Emotional Interaction (HEI) program, where Nokia Research together with many Universities are working together to find new ways of creating emotionally rich experiences in interaction and communication.
And finally I want to mention that I nowadays do all my software and algorithm development using the fantastic Qt http://qt.nokia.com/ cross-platform application development framework.
Publications
Development of iodine stabilized He-Ne lasers at MRI.
J. Hu, T. Ahola, K. Riski, E. Ikonen.
Measurement. Journal of the International
Measurement Confederation (IMEKO), No 16, 1995, pp. 187-193.
On the nth harmonic locking of the iodine stabilized He-Ne laser.
J. Hu, T. Ahola, E. Ikonen, K. Riski.
Proceedings of the XXIX Annual Conference of the Finnish Physical Society,
Jyväskylä, March 16-18, 1995, paper 5.9.
Frequency Shift of (127)I2 Stabilized He-Ne Laser at the 5th Harmonic Locking,
J. Hu, T. Ahola, E. Ikonen and K. Riski.
Proceedings of PHOTONICS '95,
Prague, Czech Republic, August 23-25, 1995, pp. 85-88.
A digital control system for the iodine-stabilized He-Ne laser,
T. Ahola, J. Hu.
Proceedings of the XXX Annual Conference of the Finnish Physical Society,
Report TKK-F-A747, Helsinki 1996, paper 1:04 (poster).
Frequency Shifts of Iodine Stabilized He-Ne Lasers at Higher Order
Harmonic Stabilization,
J. Hu, T. Ahola, E. Ikonen and K. Riski.
Techical digest of the Conference on Precision Electromagnetic Measurement,
pp. 191-192, 1996.
Frequency Shifts of Iodine Stabilized He-Ne Lasers at Higher Order
Harmonic Stabilization,
J. Hu, T. Ahola, E. Ikonen and K. Riski.
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement,
vol. 46, n.o. 2, pp. 186-190, April 1997.
A Digital Control System for The Iodine Stabilized He-Ne Laser
Tom Ahola, Jianpei Hu, and Erkki Ikonen.
Review Of Scientific Instruments,
vol. 69, n.o. 5, pp. 1934-1937, May 1998.
A Tunable Iodine Stabilized He-Ne Laser At Wavelengths 543 nm, 605 nm and 612 nm
J. Hu, T. Ahola, K. Riski and E. Ikonen.
Techical digest of the Conference on Precision Electromagnetic Measurement,
pp. 249-250, 1998.
A Digital Control System For Iodine Stabilized Lasers
T. Ahola, J. Hu and E. Ikonen.
Techical digest of the Conference on Precision Electromagnetic Measurement,
pp. 247-248, 1998.
Stabilization and frequency measurements of green He-Ne lasers
K. Nyholm, T. Ahola, J. Hu, and E. Ikonen
Proceedings of the XXXIV Annual Conference of the Finnish Physical Society,
March 9-11, 2000, Espoo, Finland, Helsinki University of Technology, Publications in Engineering Physics
TKK-F-A797, p. 69.
International comparison of He-Ne lasers stabilized with 127I2 at l=633 nm: Comparison of the fift
A. Lassila. K. Riski. J. Hu. T. Ahola. S. Naicheng. L. Chengyang. P. Balling. J. Blabla. L. Abramova
Metrologia 37
pp. 701-707, 2000.
Simple technique for detection of HF radiation from lightning
Jakke Mäkelä, J. Jantunen, T. Ahola, A. Hämäläinen, Nokia Oyj, Finland, R. Montaño, and V. Cooray, University of Uppsala, Sweden
ICLP2006, 28th International Conference on Lightning Protection, September 17-21, 2006, Kanazawa, Japan
Using full-flash narrowband energy for ranging of lightning ground strokes
J.S. Mäkelä, N. Porjo, T. Ahola, A. Hämäläinen, J. Jantunen
Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 2007
Wearable FPGA Based Wireless Sensor Platform
Tom Ahola, Pekka Korpinen, Juha Rakkola, Teemu Rämö, Jukka Salminen and Jari Savolainen
EMBS2007, 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Using ratio between breakdown and return stroke intensity for narrowband flash distance estimation
J.S. Mäkelä, N. Porjo, J. Jantunen, T. Ahola, A. Hämäläinen, T. Tuomi, A. Mäkelä, V. Cooray
ICLP2009, 29th International Conference on Lightning Protection, June 23-26, 2008, Uppsala, Sweden
Pedometer for Running Activity Using Accelerometer Sensors on the Wrist
T. Ahola
Medical Equipment Insights 2010:3 1-8
It is just behind the corner – Multimodal exploration of augmented reality environments.
Saija Lemmelä, Tom Ahola, David Murphy
Pervasive 2010 Conference. Workshop on Multimodal Location Based Techniques for Extreme Navigation.
Considerations for synchronisation in body area networks for human activity monitoring
Johan Plomp, Mikko Heiskanen, Mika Hillukka, Tapio Heikkilä, Jari Rehu, Niek Lambert, Tom Ahola
International Journal of Wireless Information Networks 2011
Raja - A Multidisciplinary Artistic Performance
Tom Ahola, Koray Tahiroglu, Teemu Ahmaniemi, Fabio Belloni, Ville Ranki
NIME 2011
Patents
US 6964107 System, method, device and computer code product for improving the readability of an electronic compass
US 6552676 Method and apparatus for power reduction in switched capacitor circuits
US 7200418 Lightning distance meter feature for mobile terminals
patents pending:
US20100121834 Method and Apparatus for Quality Ranking of Media
US20110066717 Method and apparatus for time adaptation of online services to user behavior
+ many others on the way
