Research infrastructure

NEXUS

Tampere University

Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Management and Business, Faculty of Education and Culture, Faculty of Social Sciences

City Centre Campus

Hervanta Campus

Kanslerinrinne 1, 33100 Tampere

University level infrastructure

Research search

Facilities are accessible

NEXUS – Research Infrastructure for Interaction Between Humans, Technology, and Society

NEXUS combines the research environments across faculties of Education and Culture (EDU), Information Technology and Communication Sciences (ITC), Management and Business (MAB), and Social Sciences (SOC). At its core, NEXUS promotes cross-faculty collaboration, expands interdisciplinary research opportunities and provides methodological and technological support for all the faculties and research traditions involved.

NEXUS promotes symbiotic faculty activities for MAGICS and the National Roadmap

Interdisciplinary Research & Education: Joint hackathons, project-based courses, and workshops for cross-faculty teams.
Shared Infrastructure: Centralized digital booking for labs and equipment; co-working zones.
Competence Development: Cross-training for technical staff and researchers.
Strategic Partnerships: Facilitated joint research and innovation projects with industry, public sector, and international partners.

NEXUS (formerly known as the Human-Centered Research Hub) is a multidisciplinary research infrastructure focused on human-centered research. As a member of the national MAGICS research infrastructure, it provides resource and a repository of the laboratory facilities and equipment, but also of the underlying cross-disciplinary competences. The research infrastructures offer wider range of opportunities for researchers and teachers that NEXUS is poised to support, develop and promote for the full range of users.

NEXUS Mission and Vision (PDF, 66.41 KB)

The laboratories that are a part of NEXUS are listed on the Resources page.
The key people in NEXUS can be found on the page on the Contacts page.

Contact us (nexus [at] tuni.fi) or laboratory coordinator Pentti Henttonen (pentti.henttonen [at] tuni.fi (pentti[dot]henttonen[at]tuni[dot]fi)) directly for further information and any inquiries regarding NEXUS and its development.

NEXUS Facilities

NEXUS consists of the research infrastructures listed below that were originally developed in participating faculties. Joint management transforms the infrastructures into a coherent and efficient facility.

Psychophysiology laboratory

Scent Technology laboratory

Touch and Gaze laboratory

Multimodal Driving Laboratory

Ludus

Human Information Processing Laboratory

Psychology Clinic PSYKE

Puheen tutkimuksen keskus PUTUKE

Decision Making Laboratory DMlab

Future Classroom Lab FCLab

Interpreting studio

RoboStudio

XR Economies Lab

Device takeout

Some of the hardware used in laboratories have parallel and extended usage possibilities. For organizing the reservation and delivery of these movable devices there is the device takeout service.

ITC Device Takeout service

Acknowledging NEXUS

When publishing results that have been supported by NEXUS, we require that you:

Acknowledge the NEXUS and MAGICS infrastructures in your publication.
Add NEXUS as Facilities/Equipment for the publication in TUNICRIS.

These two steps are important for monitoring the impact of the research infrastructure.

Your research has received support from the infrastructure if at least one of the the following criteria is met:

Used the NEXUS facilities listed on this page.
Research equipment belonging to the NEXUS facilities was used either in the laboratories or outside them.
Used the ITC Device Takeout or Aalto Takeout services.
Used software provided by NEXUS.
Received technological or methodological support or guidance from the NEXUS Technical Staff.
Used the DMLab participant pool.
- Note: If the participant pool was utilized, acknowledge "Finnish Research Infrastructure for Public Opinion (FIRIPO, decision number 327999, Research Council of Finland)" instead of MAGICS.

Infrastructure support is typically utilized in empirical and experimental research involving human participants, particularly in studies that investigate human behavior, experiences, and interaction with technologies, develop and test new technological solutions, or evaluate the impact and functionality of technology in laboratory or real-world settings.

When acknowledgment is required, you can directly copy one of the two text snippets below to the Acknowledgments section of your publication.

Standard version:

“This work was supported by the NEXUS research infrastructure at Tampere University and the National Infrastructure for Human in the Digital World (MAGICS, decision number 367669, Research Council of Finland).”

Short version if page limit is an issue:

“This work received infrastructure support from NEXUS and MAGICS (367669, Research Council of Finland).”

Acknowledgment is not required in publications reporting research that has been conducted entirely without NEXUS support. Examples include a theoretical or conceptual paper, literature review, or survey study that does not use NEXUS facilities, equipment, software, participant recruitment services, or technical staff support.

NEXUS Seminar

A monthly hybrid event open to researchers, doctoral researchers, students, and other interested participants. The seminar promotes multidisciplinary science and demonstrates current methodological developments in human-centered research. Each session consists of short talks detailing contemporary methods used at TAU in different NEXUS laboratories, followed by discussion and a networking session. Participation is possible both on-site and online.

Upcoming Seminars:

Seminar #3: Practical Experience in Conducting Laboratory Experiments

Date and time: Tuesday, November 24, 2026 at 14:00-16:00

Location: TietoPinni 4^th floor living room, Pinni B4168, City Centre Campus | Teams

Registration:

We encourage you to participate in person in Pinni B4168. If you are attending on site, please register in advance: NEXUS seminar registration (24.11.2026). This helps us to ensure we have reserved coffee for everyone participating.

The seminar will also be available in Teams: Link to stream

Program:

14:00-14:15 | Jussi Rantala: Opening words & updates from NEXUS
14:15-14:30 | Chengyuan Li: Participant Recruitment at Tampere University
14:30-15:00 | Shivang Gupta & Xinyi Yang: Conducting VR Experiments
15:00-15:20 | Sebastiano Accardi: Integrating Physiological Measures with Psychometric Surveys
15:20-16:00 | Coffee & networking

Introduction to the theme:

Laboratory experiments are a valuable research method for investigating how technologies, digital systems, and interactive artefacts influence human perceptions, experiences, and behaviours. By enabling researchers to manipulate experimental conditions and establish appropriate controls, laboratory experiments can strengthen internal validity and provide robust empirical evidence. They are widely used across disciplines, including such as human–computer interaction, information systems, business, behavioural economics, and psychology.

Despite their advantages, conducting laboratory experiments presents practical challenges, especially for early-career researchers. These include recruiting sufficient and appropriate participants, designing and implementing experimental procedures, managing technical setups, and collecting reliable data. Experiments involving immersive and interactive technologies introduce additional considerations related to usability, technological interaction, equipment configuration, and research ethics.

In this seminar, researchers from the XR Economies Lab within the Research Centre of Gameful Realities will share practical insights from research projects involving sensory VR, video, and streaming. Drawing on studies involving more than 500 participants, they will share practical insights into key aspects of laboratory experimentation, including participant recruitment at Tampere University, the design and implementation of between-subjects experiments, and the integration of self-reported psychometric surveys with physiological measures (e.g., EEG, eye tracking, GSR, and heart rate) to capture responses and processes that participants may not explicitly report. Using examples from experiments conducted with equipment such as haptic gloves and head-mounted displays (HMDs), as well as research environments including the XR Economies Lab and the Ludus laboratory, the speakers will highlight practical challenges and lessons learned throughout the experimental process.

The seminar aims to equip researchers, especially those beginning to conduct laboratory experiments, with practical knowledge to support rigorous experimental research and facilitate methodological exchange across disciplines.

Past Seminars:

Seminar #2: NoldusHub in Ludus

Date and time: Wednesday, October 28, 2026 at 10:00-12:00

Location: Ludus laboratory, Pinni B1065-72, City Centre Campus | Teams

Recording of the seminar is available here:

NEXUS seminar-20261028_100218-Meeting Recording.mp4

Program:

10:00-10:15 | Jussi Rantala: Opening words & introduction to NEXUS
10:15-10:30 | Poika Isokoski: Introduction to NoldusHub
10:30-11:30 | Poika Isokoski: Demonstration of the possibilities of NoldusHub
11:30-12:00 | Coffee & networking

Introduction to the theme:

This seminar instance will introduce NoldusHub. It is a system for recording behavior and psychophysiological measurements in experiments. It has recently been installed in four Ludus cubicles. NoldusHub can record screen capture, video of the participant (or anything), audio, skin conductance and PPG (Shimmer) or ECG (Shimmer), Noldus FaceReader analysis results, and eye tracking data (Tobii Spark). All data are stored on our local NoldusHub server where the data can be later viewed or analyzed or exported for other analysis tools.

We will show the main functions of the system with the purpose of letting participants know what, in general terms, is possible with the system. NoldusHub is intended to be a low-threshold service for users with limited time budget for learning new research tools. It is perhaps not flexible enough for all possible uses, but for example master’s thesis workers and everybody else that needs a simple tool for recording multiple channels of data from one participant in synchrony is likely to benefit from it.

Seminar #1: Research in the HIP Lab and PSYKE

Date and time: Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 14:00-16:00

Location: TietoPinni 4^th floor living room, Pinni B4168, City Centre Campus | Teams

Recording of the seminar is available here:

NEXUS seminar-20260930_140240-Meeting Recording.mp4

Program:

Introduction to the theme:

This seminar will highlight current and upcoming research projects in the Human Information Processing Laboratory (HIP Lab) and the Psychology clinic (PSYKE). Research in the HIP Lab and PSYKE is focused on social information processing in both human and human-robot interaction, with the study populations ranging from infants to adults. The highlighted projects will showcase the methodology used in studies investigating the impact of loneliness on neural activity during social interaction (LONE-MIND), neural and physiological synchrony during social interaction in autistic children (Katse taaperoon, AS-Connection), and physiological responses to infant emotions across the transition to parenthood (TransParent).

Weekly consultation service

NEXUS research support: weekly consultation service

New time! Thursdays 15:00-16:00 (from 13.8.2026-)

NEXUS provides methodological support for any and all researchers and doctoral students in participating faculties (EDU, ITC, MAB, SOC). Consultation is low threshold and seeks to cover a wide range of topics encountered during all stages of research, from planning and drafting funding applications to guidance in usage of laboratory equipment and software, and analysis of the data. In the spirit of interdisciplinarity, if NEXUS staff can't fix your problem directly, we will help directing you to a party or person that will. The consultation service provides a practical contact point with NEXUS and can be used to initiate desired levels and durations of varying research support.

For now, the service is provided in Finnish and English over Teams on every Thursday at 15:00-16:00:

No reservations are required, but to help us provide the best advice, sign up ahead using the form at: https://forms.office.com/e/G2C4i9RrCx
You can join the meetings via this link.

Also check the associated Teams group: TG-NEXUS research consultation service.

As of now, we are piloting the service and the forms of operation and hours are subject to change. We welcome all feedback and suggestions. But for now, see you on thursdays!