Erkki Oja (born 22 March 1948) is a Finnish computer scientist and Aalto Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at Aalto University School of Science.[1] He is recognized for developing Oja's rule,[2] which is a model of how neurons in the brain or in artificial neural networks learn over time.

Erkki Oja
Born (1948-03-22) 22 March 1948 (age 76)
Alma materHelsinki University of Technology
Known forOja's rule
AwardsMember of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (1992)
Fellow, International Association for Pattern Recognition (1994)
Fellow, IEEE (2000)
Knight of the White Rose of Finland (2006)
IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Neural Network Pioneer Award (2006)
Fellow, International Neural Network Society (2008)
Scientific career
FieldsMachine learning
Artificial neural networks
InstitutionsBrown University
Academy of Finland
University of Kuopio
Lappeenranta University of Technology
Aalto University
Thesis Studies of the Convergence Properties of Adaptive Orthogonalizing Filters  (1977)
Doctoral advisorTeuvo Kohonen
Doctoral studentsAapo Hyvärinen
Websiteusers.ics.aalto.fi/oja/

Early life and education edit

Oja was born in Helsinki and studied at Helsinki University of Technology, where he received his diploma engineer in 1972, licentiate in technology in 1975 and Doctor of Technology in 1977.

Career edit

Oja was a research associate at the Center for Cognitive Science at Brown University between 1977 and 1978 and a research fellow at the Academy of Finland from 1976 to 1981. Since 1981, he took up a professorship in applied mathematics at Kuopio University (now University of Eastern Finland). He was a visiting research scholar at Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1983 to 1984. From 1987 to 1993, he was a professor in computer science at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. He moved back to the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) from 1993 as a professor in computer science. He retired in 2015.[3]

Honors and awards edit

Oja is a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and the IEEE, and a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences.[4] He served as chairman of the European Neural Network Society between 2000 and 2005, and as the chairman of the Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering between 2007 and 2012. He was awarded the Frank Rosenblatt Award for his contributions to artificial intelligence research in 2019.[5]

Oja was a member of the Board of Governors for the International Neural Network Society (INNIS) in 2003. He received honorary doctorates from Uppsala University and Lappeenranta University of Technology in 2008.

Bibliography edit

  • Oja, Erkki (1983). Subspace methods of pattern recognition. Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England: Research Studies Press. ISBN 0-86380-010-6. OCLC 9827401.
  • Oja, Erkki; Kaski, Samuel, eds. (1999). Kohonen maps. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ISBN 978-0-444-50270-4. OCLC 162130904.
  • Hyvärinen, Aapo; Karhunen, Juha; Oja, Erkki (2001). Independent component analysis. New York: J. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-46419-8. OCLC 53228828.

References edit

  1. ^ "News: Erkki Oja appointed as Aalto Distinguished Professor". Aalto University. 13 June 2013. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
  2. ^ Hertz, John; Krogh, Anders; Palmer, Richard G. (2018-03-08). Introduction to the Theory of Neural Computation (1 ed.). CRC Press. doi:10.1201/9780429499661. ISBN 978-0-429-49966-1.
  3. ^ "Department of Information and Computer Science, E. Oja". users.ics.aalto.fi. Retrieved 2022-12-21.
  4. ^ "MLSP Plenary Speakers". cogsys.imm.dtu.dk. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
  5. ^ "Erkki Oja has been awarded the Frank Rosenblatt Award for his achievements in artificial intelligence research | Aalto University". www.aalto.fi. 4 September 2019. Retrieved 2022-12-21.