Hello!
My background is in natural sciences and I work as an XR Data Curator in Helsinki XR Center.
I defended my doctoral thesis in the University of Helsinki in May 2019. My research focused on the paleoecology of the Turkana Basin Plio-Pleistocene pigs, and tooth morphology and function. I analysed the abundances of different pig lineages through times to find patterns between morphological traits and changing environment. I also scanned 3D models from teeth of present day pigs and compared them to the teeth of ancient pigs to reveal their dietary preferations. Finally, I operated our chewing machine with horse teeth to study how different food abrasives wear enamel in micro and macro scale.
After my dissertation, I seeked work from many different places from research centers to national nature parks to daycare. I am an academic with a keen interest in technology and gaming, so at the end I was recruited to Helsinki XR Center (HXRC) as an XR Data Curator. My main responsibility is to gather data from Finnish XR research fields, items and researchers. The work should lead to vast understanding of Finnish XR research and provide tools for efficient networking and cooperation between academic and business world of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). Moreover, I facilitate XR workshops and visits to our XR Showroom, act as a project manager for PedaXR-project and a network specialist for AXE4-project.
Besides my work in HXRC, I have done, and I am eager to do more, CS:GO live observing for esports productions and live streaming for virtual events. I have done CS:GO live observing for Telia Esports Series, YLE eurheilu and Elisa Esports, and live streaming for Finnish Virtual Reality Association and Helsinki XR Center.
As a person who has studied the ancient world through fossils, I am thrilled to be able to join the world of future technology, which, who knows, might someday bring the ancient world so realistically back that one could not differentiate it from the real world.
Janina Rannikko
