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Home > People > tom_ahola
Tom Ahola BackgroundI have been with Nokia Research Center since the beginning of 1999. I have a Licentiate of Technology degree (1996) from Helsinki University of Technology, where I started my studies in 1987. I got my Master's degree in 1993. 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 AmbitionsI'm in particular interested in signal processing and algorithms related to measurement, sensors and audio. 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. 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 It is often said that communication technologies gives you greater mobility. But mobility does not only mean you can travel more but it also means you can do things without traveling. Traveling is one of the great destroyers of our environment. It causes pollution, greenhouse gases, climate change, noise, energy waste and stress. I have a short distance to work so I walk or come by bicycle. The brain is most innovative in the morning and sitting in a traffic jam before work would definitely kill creativity. I hope that one day technology is advanced enough that people don't have to be in this rat race that is an relic from the industrial revolution. An I hope I can make some small contributions to this modern technology by my work at Nokia. I was researching wellness and health care issues, which are rapidly growing businesses, 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 Continua Activity Monitor Specification, 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 healthy! I now work in the Multimodal Interaction team of NRC Tampere. I have always been interested in usability issues and feel many technology products that are meant to make life easier actually causes 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. LinksNWSP - Nokia Wrist-Attached Sensor Platform
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