Tampere Graduate School in Information Science and Engineering (TISE) is a doctoral (PhD) program, offered jointly by Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and University of Tampere (UTA). In TISE it is possible to obtain doctoral degrees in the areas of the participating departments. The two universities are located in Tampere, a city of some 200,000 inhabitants in southern Finland, approximately 170 kilometers from the Baltic coast and from Helsinki. As one of the main industrial centers in Finland, Tampere is a rapidly developing center for information technology. In addition to dozens of smaller local companies, companies like Nokia and Metso Automation have major research and development departments in Tampere. Traditionally cooperation between the two universities and the Finnish industry is good.
Presently, the total number of professors in the participating departments is over 60.
TISE offers advanced courses in Information Science and Engineering, and supervision of students within already existing research projects. The main areas of research are the following:
Signal Processing Related Technologies. Research in this area deals with fundamental concepts and methods in signal processing and applications of signal processing techniques, e.g., in the fields of wireless communications and positioning technologies, speech and audio, multimedia and imaging systems, biological signals and images, as well as computational systems biology.
Computer Science and Computer Engineering. Research in this area deals with formal methods in software development, formal verification of software, embedded systems, design methods for hardware and software co-design, processor and computer architectures, parallel computing systems, as well as distributed systems and data communications.
Databases, Information Retrieval, and Information Systems. Research in this area deals with database design and data modeling, information retrieval in all types of databases and the WWW, cross-language and semantic information retrieval, evaluation of information retrieval systems, as well as design and evaluation of information systems.
Mathematical and Statistical Modeling, Scientific Computing, and Data Analysis. Research in this area includes information theoretic and stochastic methods, systems theory, discrete mathematical methods, pattern recognition, machine learning, data mining, learning algorithms, and computationally intensive methods.
Each student of TISE has a supervisor who will lead his/her studies and research work. The exact plan of the studies is negotiated between the student and the supervisor, and it has to be subjected to formal approval by the university. TISE offers advanced courses in Information Science and Engineering including key courses. Unless otherwise agreed with the Director of TISE, each TISE student has to take these key courses so that the total amount of courses is at least 10 credits (at least two courses).
Each student accepted to TISE will be assigned to one of the associated research groups. Students will be accepted at most for a period of four years at a time. Shorter periods may also be granted, for instance, when the thesis work has already started before entering the program. Studentship is conditional on the progress of the studies and the thesis work, which are checked annually. Presently there are no tuition fees for TISE.