Aalto University    

Visa Koivunen, Aalto Distinguished Professor (D.Sc. (EE))



IEEE Fellow, EURASIP Fellow, IEEE Eta Kappa Nu member
Signal Processing,
Dept of Signal Processing and Acoustics,
Aalto University, Finland


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Visa Koivunen (IEEE Fellow, EURASIP Fellow) received his D.Sc. (EE) degree with honors from the University of Oulu, Dept. of Electrical Engineering. He received the primus doctor award among the doctoral graduates in years 1989-1994. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu. From 1992 to 1995 he was a visiting researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. Since 1999 he has been a full Professor of Signal Processing at Aalto University (formerly known as Helsinki Univ of Technology), Finland. He received the Academy professor position (distinguished professor nominated by the Academy of Finland). Since 2020 hes has been DAalto DIstinguished professor of Electrical Engineering. He was one of the Principal Investigators in SMARAD Center of Excellence in Research nominated by the Academy of Finland. Years 2003-2006 he was adjunct full professor at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. During his sabbatical term in 2006-2007 he was a visiting fellow at Princeton University, NJ, USA. He has also been a part-time Visiting Fellow at Nokia Research Center (2006-2012). Since 2010 he has been visiting fellow (part-time) at Princeton University and spent a full sabbatical at Princeton University for the academic year 2013-2014 and yearly research visits of 1-3 months.

He has served as an associate editor for IEEE Signal Processing Letters and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. He has served as co-editor for two IEEE JSTSP special issues. He was a member of editorial board for IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. He has been a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society technical committees SPCOM-TC and SAM-TC. He was the general chair of the IEEE SPAWC 2007 conference in Helsinki, Finland June 2007. He was the Technical Program Chair for the IEEE SPAWC 2015 in Stockholm. He was the General Chair of 2018 Asilomar Conference.

Dr. Koivunen's research interest include statistical, communications, sensor array and multichannel signal processing and their applications in wireless comms, future radar systems, csmart grid and data science. He has published more than 430 papers in international scientific conferences and journals and holds 5 patents. He has advised 28 doctoral theses in these research topics. He co-authored the papers receiving the best paper award in IEEE PIMRC 2005, EUSIPCO'2006,EUCAP (European Conference on Antennas and Propagation) 2006 and COCORA 2012. He has been awarded the IEEE Signal Processing Society best paper award for the year 2007 (with J. Eriksson) and for the second time in 2017 (with Zoubir et al). he has been primary adviser of 28 doctoral thesis works.

He has been awarded the 2015 EURASIP (European Association for Signal Processing) Technical Achievement Award for fundamental contributions to statistical signal processing and its applications in wireless communications, radar and related fields. He was a member of the IEEE Fourier Award committee 2016-2018. He was 2015-2016 IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in signal processing. He has servied as a vice chair of the IEEE SPS fellow Evaluation committee in 2016-2019.


Principal Investigator in SMARAD (Smart and Novel Radios Research Unit) Center of Excellence in Research nominated by Academy of Finland, 2001-2007 and 2008-2013

Associate Editor, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine


IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Technical Committee (SAM-TC), member


Statistical Signal Processing Research Group

My research interests include:

Estimation and detection.
Statistical Inference and DAta Science.
Multiantenna Communications
Cognitive Radios, flexible spectrum use
Diversity methods in Radar, MIMO radar, Cognitive Radar
Wireless localization
Multisensor Systems, Array Processing, Conformal Arrays, sparse arrays, non-idealities
Machine Learning for sradar, comms and ignal processing, optimization.
Non-cooperative signal processing, defence applications.


Teaching at Aalto: :

Statistical Signal Processing
Submarine data for Statistical Signal Processing course assignment

I have been working at:
Visiting Fellow, Princeton University, 2007, 2010-

Visiting Fellow, Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, 2006-2012


Adjunct Professor, 2003-2006
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Signal Processing Laboratory, Tampere University of Technology.

Laboratory of Computer and Information Science, Helsinki University of Technology.


Signal Processing Research Lab (SPRL) of Prof. Saleem A. Kassam, Dept. of EE, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
GRASP Lab, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Dept. of EE, Univ. of Oulu, Finland (alma mater).


Non-academic stuff:

Ready to chair a thesis defence. Sometimes even professors look decent:

in Winter Wonderland


My second job as a ski instructor , just in case! In my office and another office view , another cloudy day