Informatics Europe’s Bulletin  July 2024

Dear Members,

We are happy to send you the latest Informatics Europe bulletin, our bi-monthly newsletter for members.

In this issue:

Informatics Europe Meets EU Policy Makers in Brussels

Informatics Europe, in partnership with ACM Europe, organized on March 15 an event in Brussels where important joint initiatives were presented and discussed with representatives from the European Commission. Members from the Directorates DG Education, DG CONNECT and DG Research and Innovation engaged in discussion panels with members from the Informatics Europe Board and the ACM Europe Council on the recommendations of two papers prepared jointly by the two organizations: Informatics for All: The Strategy and When Computers Decide: European Recommendations on Machine-Learned Automated Decision Making. This event marks an important milestone for Informatics Europe and our community since it established the opportunity for a more concrete dialog and longer term rapport with the European Commission on issues of central importance to the academic Informatics community in Europe. 

Informatics for All: The Strategy

Informatics for All: The Strategy is a comprehensive and ambitious plan to establish Informatics as an essential discipline for students in Europe at all levels throughout the educational system. Learning Informatics will enable all students to understand, participate in, influence and contribute to the development of the digital world in general, and will provide a significantly improved opportunity for recruiting and educating the large number of IT specialists Europe needs to maintain and improve its position in the digital world economy.

“Informatics for All: The Strategy” builds on an earlier report also jointly developed by Informatics Europe and the ACM Europe Council, “Informatics Education in Europe: Are We All in the Same Boat?” which presented the state of relevant education and related teacher training across Europe. Its conclusions highlighted the serious need for an initiative to ensure that Informatics is properly recognised within the educational systems so that Europe is well placed to compete globally in reaping the benefits that flow from Informatics.

“Informatics for All: The Strategy,” was the focus of a panel discussion of leading Informatics educators, computer scientists and European Commission leaders in Brussels on 15 March 2018.
 

When Computers Decide: European Recommendations on Machine-Learned Automated Decision Making

Informatics Europe together with the ACM Europe Council and the ACM Europe Policy Committee joined to offer policy makers and industry 10 specific recommendations addressing the challenges posed by the increasing presence of Machine Learning (ML) and Automated Decision Making (ADM) systems in almost every aspect of modern life.
The recommendations were published as a white paper “When Computers Decide: European Recommendations on Machine-Learned Automated Decision Making.” This new report outlines the technical, ethical, legal, economic, societal and educational ramifications of ADM to be considered.
The topics raised in the “When Computers Decide” white paper were the focus of a panel discussion of leading computer scientists and European Commission leaders in Brussels on 15 March 2018.
 

Fostering Collaboration with Japan

Informatics Europe President, Prof. Enrico Nardelli and Executive Director, Dr. Cristina Pereira, met at the end of January with Prof. Eriko Uematsu, Musashinogakuin University, acting as official representative of the Information Processing Society of Japan, organization leading a major project for the development of a new computing curriculum standard, named J17, as a recommendation for university level computing education in Japan.
The project has been commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Education and aims at updating and modernizing the university computing curriculum in Japan. Prof. Uematsu visited a number or organizations and researchers in Europe with the goal of learning more about best practices and understanding the different higher education computing curricula currently being used in different European countries.

Minerva Informatics Equality Award 2018: Call open!

The third Minerva Informatics Equality Award is devoted to initiatives encouraging female students to enroll in Computer Science/Informatics programmes in Europe and retaining them. The Award seeks to celebrate successful initiatives that have had a measurable impact on the recruitment and support of female students, which could be an example of best practices within the community. The Award is sponsored by Google and carries a prize of EUR 5,000. Proposals should be submitted electronically, before 1 June 2018.

For more details visit the Minerva Informatics Equality Award page. 

Best Practices in Education Award 2018: Call open!

ECSS 2018 – First Prestigious Keynote Speakers Confirmed

• Wendy Mackay, Inria, France
• Judith Simon, University of Hamburg, Germany
• Klaus Tochtermann, Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Germany

New Jobs @ Informatics Europe Job Platform

• Assistant or Associate professor to the Department of Software Technology and Methodology - Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. 
• Post-doc in Software Engineering - University of Milano Bicocca, Italy. 
• Research Associate on text mining of electronic health records - University of Edinburgh, UK.
• ERCIM Alain Bensoussan Fellowship Programme - ERCIM.
• 16 PhD Positions on Logical Methods in Computer Science - TU Wien, Austria. 
• PhD candidate on policy based federative analytics - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Postdoctoral researcher on Simulation Environment - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 
• PhD candidate on Simulation Environment - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• PhD candidate on policy-making environment - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• 8 Post-Doctoral Fellowships MRC/UoE (Quantitative Biomedicine) - University of Edinburgh, UK.
• Research Associate in Learning Analytics – University of Edinburgh, UK.
• Assistant Professor in Video Understanding  - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Chair in Machine Learning - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• PhD Scholarships - Royal Holloway University of London, UK.
• Researcher in Negotiation with uncertain collective preferences – CWI Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• Head of Department of Computer Science - Aarhus University, Denmark.
• Assistant Professor in Software Security – IRISA/University of Rennes 1, France
• PhD Student on the subject of Verification of Mainstream Java Libraries - CWI Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 

Association News

Informatics Europe New Office Address

Informatics Europe has moved its office at the beginning of March and is now hosted by the Department of Informatics of the University of Zurich. We are very grateful to Prof. Harald Gall, Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics, and Informatics and Prof. Abraham Bernstein, Head of the Department of Informatics, for their support and being instrumental for making this partnership possible.

Please note our new address and phone number:
Informatics Europe
Binzmühlestrasse 14/54
8050 Zurich, Switzerland
Tel: +41 44 635 4354

Board Meetings 

• Friday, March 23, 16:00-17:00, Skype
• Friday, April 27, 16:00-17:00, Skype
• Wednesday, May 09, 9:30-16:30, Amsterdam

Members News

• Doctorat Honoris Causa - With the opening of the second semester, the Université catholique de Louvain granted the Doctorat Honoris Causa to three prominent persons related to our field: Mitchell Baker (President of the Mozilla Foundation); Anant Agarwal (MIT and edX CEO), and Milad Doueihi (Humanum Chair of Digital Humanism, Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-IV)).

• Two new Data Science Masters - In 2017-2018, the Louvain School of Engineering at Université catholique de Louvain opened 2 new Data Science Masters, primarily dedicated to students holding a bachelor in engineering or a bachelor in computer science. Find out more about the Master in Data Sciences Engineering and the Master in Data Sciences: Information Technology.