Dr. Antero Taivalsaari
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Distinguished Engineer, Nokia
Adjunct Professor, Tampere University of Technology (see Lively @ TUT)
I've been a believer in web-based software development since 2006. Although the Web was not originally designed to be a software development or deployment platform, it will eventually become the dominant platform for all the end-user software — not only for desktop computers but for mobile devices as well. Conventional binary software simply will not be able to compete in web-based economy in which worldwide software distribution is effectively free, applications can run without any installation, and software can be updated worldwide in a matter of seconds rather than weeks or months. All this will have a fundamental impact on the development, deployment and use of software.
Over the past years, I've built various web-based systems and written several papers on this topic with my colleagues at Sun Microsystems, Tampere University of Technology, and more recently Nokia. Refer to publications for further information.
Some Past Activities and Events (Unrelated to Nokia)
Background (Java ME and Earlier Activities)
At Sun Microsystems, I was best known as the "father" of Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME™), that is, Java on mobile phones. I started the Spotless research project at Sun Labs in Mountain View, California, with Bill Bush in January 1998. As part of that effort, I wrote the original version of the K Virtual Machine (KVM) that became the starting point of Java ME. In January 2006, the number of Java ME enabled mobile phones and other devices exceeded 1 billion worldwide, and in 2010 the number exceeded 3 billion. Very likely the Java ME system is available also in your mobile phone.
From August 1999 until the end of 2001 I was the Engineering Manager of the KVM/CLDC team at Java Software in Cupertino and Santa Clara, California, leading the team that created the original product versions of the Java ME platform. I was also the Specification Lead of the Java ME CLDC 1.0 and CLDC 1.1 standardization efforts – the base programming interfaces for nearly all mobile Java devices. In 2002-2006 I held various roles related to Java Virtual Machine development and Java ME standardization at Sun Microsystems, participating in several industry-wide Java standards activities across the world.
I've received Sun's Chairman's Award from Scott McNealy twice (in 2000 and 2003), as well as the Mobile Entertainment Forum's Outstanding Contribution Award (in 2009) for the work on Java ME. After spending seven years in Sun's Java Software organization, I returned back to Sun Labs in August 2006, and started working on projects related to web programming and mobile web applications.
Before joining Sun Microsystems in 1997, I worked as a Research Manager at Nokia in Helsinki, Finland. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I spent several years in the academic world, and completed a doctoral degree in computer science at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) in 1993, after working 1 1/2 years as a guest researcher in Canada at Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec) and University of Victoria (Victoria, British Columbia). My Ph.D. thesis focused on software reuse and inheritance mechanisms in object-oriented programming languages.
Background (Lively Kernel)
During the last years of Sun Microsystems (2006-2009), I was back at Sun Labs, where we started a number of activities around web technologies and JavaScript. With Dan Ingalls, Krzysztof Palacz and Prof. Tommi Mikkonen, we created the original version of Sun Labs Lively Kernel: the first truly interactive web programming environment that ran in a standard web browser without any installation or plug-in components – the entire Lively Kernel system is just a web page. The Lively system evolved into a number of variants, including Lively for Qt.
The Lively Kernel is maintained and developed further by Prof. Robert Hirschfeld's research team at Hasso-Platner Institute in Potsdam, Germany.
Professional Interests
Publications and Patents
Awards
Activities at Tampere University of Technology (TUT)
Family and Hobbies
Miscellaneous