Jaakko Sauvola

Dr Jaakko Sauvola (Dr. Tech, ’97 on AI, Computer Vision and Machine learning, Professor) has over 25 years of R&D, business development and business management experience in industry and academia in Finland, US, Brazil, China, India and UK. He has served in different executive and senior leadership roles in Nokia, University of Oulu and various industry forums, with over 150 completed business development, product and R&D programs, many of whose results are in use globally.

Within business, Dr. Sauvola has been responsible for various new business, R&D and corporate level roles such as Head of Nokia Strategic Business Area, Director in Corporate Business Development, R&D Director of Nokia Money business, Head of Nokia Advanced Development, Director of Nokia Strategic Architecture, Head of 13 Nokia’s Business-Technology programs, Director of Nokia Ventures, to name a few, with staff in four continents. Dr. Sauvola has co-founded three start-ups focusing on advancing digitalization, accelerating businesses, and co-developing next generation technologies with global partners.

Within ecosystems, Dr. Sauvola has led many technology, product, BD and research setups up to 600 people, as a chairman of board, as executive director or as general manager, such as Nokia Technology Institute, Digital Media Services Finland, National Kaato FDI program, National Hilla program, and Allied ICT Finland. Further, he has ideated and/or co-founded multiple research areas and ecosystems between industry and academia, e.g. Mobile Forum, PanOulu city WLAN, Octopus 3G/4G test network, Testlab Finland, Center of Internet Excellence, Arctic Drone Labs, SuperIoT, Analytics plus, Water ICT, Automotive cluster, Reboot Finland, Smart Campus and 6G Flagship.

Within academia, Dr. Sauvola has served multiple occasions as e.g., professor for digital media and information networks and professor in software engineering and on the education side teaching topics such as artificial intelligence, intelligent systems, mobility, and computer graphics, and led e.g.  Information Networks program. He has led several research groups at university, e.g., MediaTeam and Center for Advanced System Studies, and published ca 100 refereed papers in international forums, conferences and journals with research touching topics such as AI/machine vision, intelligent systems, software and system architectures, digital health, mobile services, and industrial IoT systems.

More recently, Dr. Sauvola continues to work at University of Oulu, bridging research to business via ecosystems, with activities on e.g., scalable intelligent services research, collaborating with companies with new technologies and business models, Allied ICT Finland network, 6G Flagship ecosystem, and as a professor driving co-creation RDI projects with portfolio of vision work, projects and programs in the areas of wireless, AI and IoT systems, and their use in vertical businesses and society.