News

Academic year 2023

7/2023 – Summer break is nearing its end and with it a new academic year starts. Two new PHD students have joined our group for the Eyes4ICU Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Doctoral Network project.

Trainee position in the MicroDuet project

10/22 – The MicroDuet project (Interpersonal synchrony in microsurgical training) has one salaried trainee position for international graduate students.

Details and application at: https://kamu.uef.fi/en/uef-trainee-2023/

Application deadline: 30.11.2022

Two PhD Positions in the context of Eyes4ICU Project

09/2022 – The Interactive Technologies research group led by Prof. Roman Bednarik has openings for two PhD positions in the context of Eyes4ICU, a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Doctoral Network project. These positions will involve Effective and robust predictive gaze-based models in the wild, DC3 (position 1) and Eye Tracking for Diagnosis and Early Detection of Mild Cognitive Impairments, DC11 (position 2). Interested applicants are invited to visit this link for more information about these positions and to submit their applications by 20.10.2022.

Spark Batch 2022

08/2022 – The Proof-of-Concept project “ER4Surgery – Image-guided surgery without Instruments” has been accepted into the Spark Finland mentoring program. [Link]

Systematic Review of Intraoperative Mental Stress Assessment

06/2022 – Mastaneh, Ahreum, and Roman’s paper titled “Methods and Measures for Mental Stress Assessment in Surgery: A Systematic Review of 20 Years of Literature” has been published Open Access in IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. We are the first group to provide a thorough review of experimental setups, use of wearable systems, multi-modal datasets, and data processing techniques for intraoperative assessment of mental stress and workload. We hope researchers and practitioners in BME, HCI, surgical human factors, and smart ORs can utilize our suggestions to maximize the reliability and reproducibility of their experiments in dynamic surgical settings. [Link]

Eyes4ICU Funded by the EU MSCA Doctoral Network

04/2022 – A new MSCA Doctoral Network proposal by researchers and host institutes from Finland, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Poland has been funded by the EU Horizon 2021 project. Eyes for information, communication, and understanding (Eyes4ICU) explores novel forms of gaze interaction that rely on current psychological theories and findings, computational modeling, as well as expertise in highly promising application domains. Interactive Technologies research group led by Prof. Roman Bednarik aims to recruit two PhD researchers for this project in Fall 2022. [Link]

Proof-of-Concept Funding

04/2022 – We have received a proof-of-concept funding from the UEF strategic implementation and Faculty of Science and Forestry for “Microsurgery without Instruments”. Mastaneh Torkamani-Azar (INT, School of Computing, UEF) acts as the project manager. Team members include Dr. Ahmed Hussein (Department of Neurosurgery and Microsurgery Center, Kuopio University Hospital), MSc. Zunaira Jamil, Dr. Paavo Vartiainen, and Prof. Pasi Karjalainen (Department of Applied Physics, UEF), and Assoc. Prof. Roman Bednarik (INT, School of Computing, UEF).

ACM CHI’22 workshop

04/2022 – We (Ahreum, Feng (our former postdoc), and Roman) successfully co-organized a CHI2022 workshop – Integration of Human Factors in Surgery with the great team! – Prof. Ann Blandford (UCL), Dr. Antti Huotarinen (KYS), Dr. Matti Iso-Mustajärvi (KYS), Federico Nicolosi (UpsurgeOn), Dr. Jeremy Opie (UCL), Dr. Soojeong Yoo (UCL), and Prof. Bin Zheng (Alberta). You can check more details from here: [website]

Publication on IEEE Access

03/2022 – Janne Tyni’s paper “Games and Rewards: A Scientometric Study of Rewards in Educational and Serious Games” has been published in IEEE Access volume 10 with co-authors Anni Tarkiainen, Sonsoles López-Pernas, Mohammed Saqr, Juho Kahila, Roman Bednarik and Matti Tedre. [Link]

Call for MSc Internship Applicants on Image Processing and 3D Vision

11/2021 – The Interactive Technologies research group at the School of Computing, the Department of Applied Physics, and the Microsurgery Center of Eastern Finland at Kuopio University Hospital are looking for applicants for a MSc internship project titled “Microsurgery without Instruments”. The ideal candidate should be working toward their master’s degree in computer science, applied/medical physics, photonics, computer/electrical/mechatronics engineering, or related fields. Interested students are invited to read the call for more information. The deadline to apply is December 3, 2021.

ACM CSCW’21

11/2021 – We presented one short paper at CSCW’21. “3D Exoscopes in Microsurgery: How 3D Exoscopes Reconfigure the Workflow of Assistant Surgeons and Nurses in the Operating Room” led by Ahreum Lee and Roman Bednarik. You can find more information from here: [PDF] [Video]

Call for BSc-MSc Thesis Applicants

10/2021 – We are offering supervision for a number of BSc and MSc thesis topics at the Interactive Technologies group, School of Computing, Joensuu campus. Interested students are invited to visit this page for more information.

Proof-of-Concept funding

06/2018 – We received a proof-of-concept funding from UEF strategic resources for prototyping future medical technologies.

IEEE CBMS’18

06/2018 – Piotr Bartczak was presenting four full papers at the 31st IEEE CBMS International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems.

ACM ETRA’18

06/2018 – We were presenting three papers at ETRA’18, EMIP and Petmei in Warsaw, and running the Doctoral Symposium together with Reynold Bailey (Rochester Institute of Technology) and Marcus Nystrom (Lund University).