JYU’s new Professor of Practice, Ari Jaaksi, is a familiar name at Silicon Valley
Ari Jaaksi has worked in various leadership positions at HP, Intel and Mozilla. In Finland Jaaksi worked at Nokia with the MeeGo operating system, among other things. Since 2018, Jaaksi has been a member of the Faculty of Information Technology’s Faculty Council in Jyväskylä.
–I came back to Finland due to family reasons in 2017 and thought that I’ve had enough of corporate jobs. At the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥, bureaucracy is low and there is a functional and forward-looking vibe. Here we have the most knowledgeable and likeable people in the field of IT in the whole of Finland.
Return to the academic circles
Jaaksi once set out to build a career specifically in the academic world and worked as a professor for a short period of time at Tampere University. However, the growth of Nokia sucked Jaaksi in in 1997 and after that, his career took him to the United States.
According to Jaaksi, Jyväskylä is special due to strong, multidisciplinary knowhow and bureaucracy that feels lower than in other universities.
–I am enthusiastically looking forward to working with especially Tommi Mikkonen and Pekka Abrahamsson, both of whom are top-tier professors in the field of software production in Finland. I have a very different history compared to them, and I believe that combining different backgrounds always brings something more to the equation.
The Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology, Pasi Tyrväinen, says that Jaaksi’s experience in leadership positions in top international companies in the field of ICT offers the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ a good base with which to expand technological education to include technical management. The duration of Jaaksi’s professorship of practice is five years at 15 % of full working hours.
A person may be appointed as a Professor of Practice, if they have significant professional experience in leadership positions outside of the academic circles, and their knowledge can be seen as being especially useful for the University’s education and research activities.
Contact Information
Ari Jaaksi
ari.a.jaaksi@jyu.fi