AIS awards Jyväskylä team for high-impact research
The Association for Information Systems (AIS), a leading organisation in the field of information systems science, has awarded the prestigious AIS Impact Award to a Jyväskylä-based team for their research that has had a significant impact on technology and entrepreneurship.
The award was presented at the International Conference of Information Systems (ICIS) on 16 December, and it was received by Lecturer Pentti Marttiin (JYU), former Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology Kalle Lyytinen (JYU), Professor Matti Rossi (Aalto University; former PhD student at JYU), Docent Juha-Pekka Tolvanen (JYU), and PhD Steven Kelly who received his doctoral degree from the Ģֱ.
The prize was awarded for research in metamodeling and more effective software design. The team’s work has not only led to academic publications but also to the establishment of the MetaCase company in Jyväskylä.
“It is really great for all of us that our long-term efforts have now been rewarded,” says Marttiin. “The research at the Ģֱ originally started back in the 1980s.”
During the project, which was originally funded by TEKES, the team quickly developed the first concrete product that made it possible to create code using only a graphical user interface and the terminology of one’s own field.
“At the time, it was not typical for a research project to result in well-functioning products” says Marttiin. “So the impact of this project began to extend beyond academic research at an early stage.”
In 1993, a company was founded around the product, which has since been used in hundreds of customer projects, including Nokia, Polar, Panasonic and VTT.
The team recalls that Nokia, for example, used MetaCase to improve its own software production many times over compared to traditional forms of software development during its years of rapid growth.
Marttiin says he is particularly pleased that the AIS award brings further recognition to the research method used by the team. When they started, it was not so common to combine research with the design of concrete outcomes in the field of information systems science.
In addition to the company’s activities, the impact of the project and the research is also visible in the academic world, as the project has produced at least ten PhDs, five licentiate degrees and a number of papers and other research publications.
