I was awarded my doctoral hat and sword at the 100th Ph.D. promotion ceremony at the University of Helsinki. The conferment ceremony is a centuries-old Finnish academic tradition where PhD graduates receive their doctoral insignia—the hat symbolizing academic achievement and the sword representing the defense of research and academic values. This particular ceremony was especially significant as it marked the 100th promotion at the University of Helsinki.
The ceremony celebrates the culmination of my PhD dissertation "Edge Computing: Platforms and Protocols", which I defended in November 2019 under the excellent supervision of Prof. Jussi Kangasharju. The research focused on designing edge infrastructure, optimizing network protocols for edge environments, characterizing edge network performance, and enabling latency-sensitive applications.
The complete conferment ceremony is available online: Watch the Ceremony
This PhD work received the Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award 2020 from IEEE TCSC (Technical Committee on Scalable Computing) and laid the foundation for my current research. The ideas and principles from this work continue to influence our ongoing edge computing research, including the Oakestra project, contributions to IETF/IRTF standards, and deployment patterns in real-world edge systems.
After completing my PhD at University of Helsinki, I continued as Senior Researcher at Technical University of Munich (2020-2024) and now lead the SPEAR Lab at TU Delft, advancing edge computing and satellite networking research while mentoring the next generation of researchers. The doctoral hat and sword serve as reminders of the responsibility that comes with academic achievement—to pursue truth, advance knowledge, and serve society.
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