Obituary: Tiit Roosmaa has passed away

On Monday 7 October 2024 our friend and colleague Associated Professor Emeritus Tiit Roosmaa (14.02.1955–07.10.2024) sadly passed away aged 69.

Having graduated from Tallinn Secondary School in 1973 and from the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Tartu in 1978, he received a research degree (PhD) from the Institute of Cybernetics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences in 1987. From 1978 to 1980, he was a senior engineer and junior researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Tartu. From 1980 to 1983, he was a post-doc researcher at the Department of Programming, and from 1984 to 1993, he worked as an assistant and senior lecturer and eventually became Associate Professor. Tiit travelled widely to further his education. He studied at the Universities of Sunderland, Manchester and Helsinki, the Institute of Technology Tallaght (Dublin), as well as the Charles University in Prague. Since 1993 he has been Associate Professor at the Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu. He held this position until 2020, when he was awarded the title of Associate Professor Emeritus.

From 1989 to 2011, he was the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Tartu, a position he held for 22 years. During this time, he headed the Institute of Computer Science from 2003 to 2010. Tiit was Rector of the Estonian Information Technology College from 2011 to 2016 until it was merged with Tallinn University of Technology. Most recently, Tiit held the position of Programme Manager of the Master's Programme "Conversion Master in IT" at the Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu. 

Tiit's work in promoting IT education in Estonia came at a difficult time when the importance of the IT field and the need for related professional education was growing rapidly. Together with universities, ICT companies and the state, the Estonian Information Technology College was established and staffed by lecturers from two major universities. To alleviate the shortage of teaching staff, the University of Tartu's Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics started to recruit researchers, who had studied abroad and were ready to return to Estonia. Foreign lecturers were also recruited.

Tiit's professional activities focused on linguistics and computational linguistics. Together with Professor Mare Koit, basic research in Estonian linguistics was kept alive and developed, and national programmes in language technology and the development of language databases were implemented. Tiit also played a crucial role in Estonia becoming a member of the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure CLARIN. 

Tiit Roosmaa was a founding member of the Estonian Information Technology Foundation EITSA, a member of the International Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL), a member of the Council of the Estonian Information Technology College from 2000-2003 and had been a member of the Estonian Council for Higher Education Assessment since 2007. 

Tiit has taught courses in programming, artificial intelligence and language technology to undergraduate students and published many research papers on language technology and computational linguistics. His lectures were always thoroughly prepared, engaging and detailed. Tiit was a much appreciated and loved lecturer among students. 

Tiit was always correct, courteous, caring, and respectful of his colleagues. He will be remembered by them as a friendly and fair leader, a man of his word. Tiit was a visionary who could see the way ahead and inspire everyone to work towards a goal. He was able to create an excellent atmosphere in every team he worked with. 

His legacy and the contribution he made to IT education are hard to overestimate. We will always remember our friendly colleague with kind words, and we extend our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.