CSC's Scientific Customer Panel expanded
CSC's Scientific Customer Panel has been expanded with new members and scientific fields. Digital Humanities Professor Mikko Tolonen of the University of Helsinki Department of Modern Languages and Tenure Track Professor Tuuli Toivonen of the Department of Geosciences and Geography joined the Scientific Customer Panel in the spring of 2017. The number of panel members increased to ten with the new additions.
Convening four times a year, the panel plays an important role in the development of CSC services. The panel tasks also include scientific evaluation of Grand Challenge and DECI applications.
– The panel will be expanded to include two new fields of research, thus allowing CSC to better meet the needs of new scientific fields. Both geoinformatics and digital humanities are a growing segment of customers using CSC services, and the new panel members bring with them knowledge and expertise on how the digitisation of research influences the use of computational methods in their respective fields, explains Pekka Lehtovuori, Director, Services for Research.
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"It is important to keep an eye on the future"
Tolonen serves as a professor of digital humanities in the Department of Modern Languages. He used CSC resources in the analysis of historical data. Computational science methods also offer new possibilities in humanities research.
– I represent humanities research, where the possibilities offered by scientific computing are a relatively new thing. It is particularly important to keep an eye on the future where the needs of humanities and social sciences will develop with regard to scientific computation. This is why it's extremely interesting for me to serve on this panel, bringing my own influence as a representative of "conventional" humanities research, says Tolonen.
– We've already made use of CSC's computational resources, such as in analysing the extensive data on text recycling in 18th century literature. Use of these resources will increase even further in the future – humanists are often interested in materiality and many of the methods used to analyse this require computing power, adds Tolonen.
The use of location-bound data is growing in research
Tuuli Toivonen focuses her research on, for example, the use of geoinformatics in urban planning and is also an active proponent of open science.
– The use of location-bound data is growing exponentially in research. Traditionally used by very few researchers, geographic data is now being used for research in more and more scientific fields. Geographic position can serve as a unifying factor between a wide variety of information sources, creating completely new study designs. For example, regional concentrations of medical findings have recently been successfully linked with behavioural models revealed through the use of social media data, and information is derived from extensive remote sensing data for use in archaeological research. New types of research questions and the extensive use of geographic data or geographic data methods in research also create new needs for the development of computing services for researchers.
– I hope that, as a panel member, I will be able to introduce these viewpoints in the development of computing services and, more generally, provide support for services promoting the practice of open science, says Toivonen.