The Laboratory of Computer and Information Science founded by prof. Kohonen in 1965 at the Helsinki University of Technology has a long history for researching and teaching neural networks and pattern recognition. The main research topics have been self-organising maps [Kohonen, 1995], data mining [Hand et al., 2001], and independent component analysis [Hyvärinen et al., 2001]. The research focus has since shifted from neural networks to machine learning, algorithmic data analysis and data mining. Many of our master's level courses were already given in English or their materials were in English during the last years. So it was a natural step further to install an international masters' programme for ensuring that our department gets a sufficient amount of qualified master's students. In 2007, the first international group of students started at our new Macadamia master's programme for machine learning and data mining [Oja et al., 2007 ].
Macadamia is a very focused master's programme concentrating on a well-defined topic. It is based on the strong existing curriculum in the department for Finnish students. Macadamia also gives a strong background for postgraduate studies in the area. It is an interesting question how focused the studies should be at this level.
Our laboratory has historically attracted students from several fields within our university, including computer science, electrical engineering, and engineering physics and mathematics. To continue this tradition, our aim has been to make Macadamia accessible to students with all these different backgrounds as well.