Informatics Europe Bulletin - June 2019

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	Informatics Europe Bulletin - June 2019

	Dear Members, We are happy to send you the latest Informatics Europe bulletin, our bi-monthly newsletter for members. In this issue: ECSS 2019 Renewed and Enriched Format Speakers Leaders Workshop Bridging the Talent Gap - Workshop with the European Commission Dialogue with Members Session Venue Informatics for All Workshop in Brussels - Outcomes Meeting of National Associations in Zurich Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism Association News New Members New Office Staff Board Meetings Membership Renewals 2019 Members News New Jobs @ Informatics Europe Job Platform ECSS 2019 Renewed and Enriched Format The 15th European Computer Science Summit - ECSS 2019 - will be held in Rome, Italy, October 28-30, 2019. The conference this year will have a renewed and enriched format consisting of a main summit of three days composed of a number of complementary events and sessions. The conference opens on Monday with a Workshop for Leaders of Informatics Research and Education, and a Workshop of the WIRE working group. The program continues with keynote addresses and a thought-provoking discussion panel on the central theme ‘Social Responsibility of Informatics’. An array of interdisciplinary topics regarding the interplay between Informatics and Ethics, Law, Privacy; Responsible Research and Innovation and Artificial Intelligence will be addressed by a selection of distinguished speakers from all over Europe. Rounding up Tuesday’s program, we will have the Informatics Europe and ERCIM Awards Ceremony, the Dialogue with Members Session and the Informatics Europe Annual General Assembly where key topics of relevance to the community and the development of the organisation will be actively discussed. This year we want to encourage a closer dialogue and an even more active participation from our members. The program will include a Creative Coffee Break and a Members’ Voice track where members will have the opportunity to actively contribute and discuss ways to implement their ideas. The Summit is concluded on Wednesday with a very special Workshop on Bridging the Digital Talent Gap in Europe organized by Informatics Europe in partnership with the European Commission’s DG CONNECT. The workshop will bring together leaders from Universities, Industry and the European Commission for an open, transparent and productive conversation on the complex, pervasive and pressing issue of the digital talent gap. An advance detailed schedule is already available on the ECSS 2019 website. This year, the Summit is co-chaired by Enrico Nardelli, Informatics Europe President, University of Rome "Tor Vergata" and Gianfranco Basti, Pontifical Lateran University, with organizational support by Alessandro Mei and Tiziana Catarci, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Paolo Atzeni, University of Rome “Tre”, and Roberto Basili, University of Rome "Tor Vergata". Program Chairs include Elisabetta Di Nitto, Politecnico di Milano, and Paola Mello, University of Bologna; Geraldine Fitzpatrick, TU Vienna and Gregor Engels, University of Paderborn; Erika Abraham, RWTH Aachen University, Lejla Batina, Radboud University, and Alexandra Silva, University College London, Fabrizia Benini and Alexander Riedl, European Commission (DG CONNECT). Speakers ECSS is known to bring prominent and high calibre keynote speakers on stage. ECSS 2019 is no exception, the following keynote speakers and panellists are already confirmed: Keynote Speakers Tony Belpaeme, Ghent University Virginia Dignum, Umeå University Mireille Hildebrandt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Paola Inverardi, University of L'Aquila Bernd Stahl, De Montfort University Panellists Guglielmo Tamburrini, University of Naples (Panel Chair) Peggy Valcke, KU Leuven Antonio Spadaro, La Civiltà Cattolica Hannes Werthner, TU Vienna Leaders Workshop The Workshop for Leaders of Informatics Research and Education addresses specific challenges they encounter in their role. The workshop is a unique networking forum for leaders of Informatics institutions and research groups, and focuses on concrete issues and practical solutions. The 2019 workshop will be held on Monday, October 28, chaired by Gregor Engels, Paderborn University and Geraldine Fitzpatrick, TU Vienna. The central theme is Developing as a Leader in an Academic Context, with main focus on special skills and leadership training needed to play a leadership role at any level in an academic context. This will be a highly interactive workshop, based on evidence-based leadership research, with a series of discussions/knowledge sharing/exchange in both large and smaller groups and summarising presentations that point to current research and practical guidelines. To get more details about the content and topics covered, visit the Leaders Workshop web page. Bridging the Talent Gap - Workshop with the European Commission Informatics Europe in partnership with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) will organise on Wednesday, October 30, a workshop that will bring together higher education organisations, industry and public policy makers to reflect and act on the problem of the Digital Talent Gap. The goals are to identify current challenges, opportunities and together propose solutions that could help bridging the supply-demand gap in ICT in Europe, resulting in more graduates with the skills needed by European businesses to grow and innovate. Particular areas of interest are: Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security and Software Engineering. The workshop will be a mixture of presenting results of preparatory desk research, including a short survey, presentation of success stories, participatory workshops on concrete topics run by professional facilitators with a high degree of interactivity, harvesting and discussions, planning next possible steps as emerged at the workshop. Concrete outcomes will be sought and a report from the workshop will be published, containing, for example, proposals for new and amended courses; suggestions for new models of industry-academy cooperation in higher education; input to existing and future funding programmes at the European (Digital Europe Programme, Horizon Europe), national and regional level; ideas for possible increase of private-sector investments. It will be considered whether a large consensus emerges on some key points that could be the base for a possible joint manifesto signed by the workshop participants. To get more details about the content and topics discussed, visit the Talent Gap Workshop web page. Dialogue with Members Session To strength the network of members and allow them to participate actively in the main decisions regarding the strategy for future development of Informatics Europe, as well as keeping them informed of the main activities and outcomes of the organisations’ work, Informatics Europe will be organising this year in Rome: A Dialogue with Members session which will include a track focused on the progress of Activities and Outcomes of Informatics Europe Working Groups and High-Level activities, a Creative Coffee Break and a Member's Voice track where members of the association will have the opportunity to discuss their ideas with other members and the Board and present their ideas on how they would like to contribute and shape the future of the organisation. The Informatics Europe Annual General Assembly to discuss the main organisational and financial outcomes of the past year and outline the association's plans and finances for future years. For more up to date information, visit the Informatics Europe Sessions web page. Venue The Summit will be held at the Hotel NH Collection Roma Centro - Via dei Gracchi, 324, 00192, Rome, Italy. See here a map of the location. The Hotel is located in the heart of Rome, in the Prati/Vatican City area. The closest Metro station is Lepanto. Information on how to reach the Venue and Accommodation can be found at the ECSS 2019 website. Informatics for All Workshop in Brussels - Outcomes In February 2019, Informatics Europe organised, jointly with ACM Europe Council and CEPIS, a workshop to discuss further with members of the national communities the Informatics for All Coalition. Over 50 representatives from leading European universities and industry met in Brussels to identify and discuss the top challenges for the initiative. As an outcome of the workshop, a report and an action plan came out. They are available for download at the new website of the Informatics for All Coalition: https://www.informaticsforall.org/ Meeting of National Associations in Zurich On July 9, Informatics Europe will organise a meeting in Zurich to discuss further with representatives of the national communities the main theme of Informatics research evaluation. The meeting will gather around 20 representatives of Informatics national associations from 7 European countries. The purpose of the meeting is to share knowledge about initiatives ongoing in various national communities on research evaluation and to openly and constructively discuss whether there is the possibility for shared actions at the European level - leveraging the national initiatives - so as to build something that can be helpful beyond the national scenarios. The outcomes of the meeting will be reported and shared with our members soon. Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism In April 2019, the Technical University of Vienna organised the first International Workshop on Digital Humanism to discuss and reflect on Digital Humanism, term which refers to the era of the Renaissance, not only to make the digital world and development more “human”, but also to initiate a broad approach integrating different disciplines for new scientific insights, discussions, and spreading of critical thoughts and knowledge. The workshop considered that we are in the midst of the digital transformation of our society, with computer science / Informatics and its artefacts as a major driver of change. Whereas this development opens enormous possibilities for our future, it also raises serious questions and has dramatic downsides, like the monopolies in the Web, or the use of IT and the Internet for surveillance. We are at the crossroad for our future, and the issue is which direction to take. The presentations and discussions at the workshop lead the way to the creation of the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism. Informatics Europe encourages its members to support the manifesto by sign it either as individuals (signing here) or on behalf of their institutions or research groups (by sending an email to Hannes Werthner: hannes.werthner@ec.tuwien.ac.at). Association News New Members We are very pleased to welcome the following new members: Politecnico di Torino, Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica University of Reading, Department of Computer Science. They join a constantly growing community of close to 140 members from 31 European countries. Check out the current members list. New Office Staff We are happy to welcome Franziska Hauffe to the Informatics Europe team! She will work part time in the role of Communications and Administration Specialist from mid-June. Originally from Germany, Franziska holds a Bachelor’s degree in North American Studies and has a solid experience in the field of academic communications and administration which she acquired working in international offices of two top-level universities in Germany and Switzerland. We wish Franziska a lot of success in her new role! She can be contacted by email at: franziska.hauffe@informatics-europe.org Board Meetings The Informatics Europe Board met by teleconference on April 26 and face to face in Zurich on May 24 for discussions on a number of topics, including: organisation of ECSS 2019, progress and outcomes of high-level activities and working groups, membership drive, finances. Next Board Meetings: Friday, June 28, 16:00-17:00, Skype Wednesday, July 10, 9:30-16:30 (Executive Committee Only) Friday, August 30, 16:00-17:00, Skype Friday, September 27, 16:00-17:00, Skype Sunday, October 27, 14:30-18:30, Rome Thursday, October 31, 09:30-16:30, Rome (Executive Committee Only) Don’t forget: as a member representative, you can submit agenda topics and participate as an observer in Board meetings. Let us know! Membership Renewals 2019 Note that the invoices for the 2019 Membership renewal will be sent to our members in the coming weeks. If there has been any change in your department that affects the invoicing data, please contact us at: administration@informatics-europe.org. We thank you for your contribution and trust! For any question regarding your annual fee please contact us. Members News Helsinki University, Finland Helsinki Centre for Data Science (HiDATA) is a hub of Data Science focusing on methodologies for extracting knowledge from data thus contributing to different areas of science. HiDATA has appointed eight new professors in the fields of: Data-Intensive Computing in Natural Sciences, Parallel and Distributed Data Science, Spatiotemporal Data Analysis for Sustainability Science, Computer Science and Atmospheric Sciences, Data Science - Machine Learning and AI, Data Science - Knowledge discovery in big data and Privacy-aware and secure data science. More details are here. Innopolis University, Russia Innopolis University (IU), Innopolis, Russia, is a young and ambitious university focused on education and research in Computer Science. Its goal is to produce world-class IT specialists able to significantly contribute to Russian and global economy. The University offers programs in Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Robotics, Game Development and Applications, and Data Science at undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels. IU Faculty consists of distinguished scholars from Europe, North America, and Asia. The language of instruction is English, and about 20% students are international. All students have a chance to receive a scholarship covering 100% of the tuition fees, living expenses, accommodation, and advanced support. More details are here. Transport and Telecommunication Institute, Latvia In the 2018/19 academic year, Transport and Telecommunication Institute (TSI) (Riga, Latvia) has started to implement the ESF project “Strengthening the academic staff of the Transport and Telecommunication Institute in the areas of strategic specialization”/STTIAS (N° 8.2.2.0/18/A/011). On that occasion, TSI is announcing the selection of foreign professors and doctoral students/PhD candidates for the academic work in 2019/20. More details about the project can be found here. The regulation of open Calls for academic staff is available here. University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy Starting from the next academic year, the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bari "Aldo Moro" will activate a new second-level/master degree in Data Science, which aims to train students to become data scientists, that is professionals with theoretical, methodological and practical knowledge in computer science, mathematics, statistics, digital economy and data protection law. The master will enable its graduates to understand and analyse large data sets (big data) relating to either industrial or scientific domains. More details are here. Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium The open-source ebook "Computer Networking: Principles, Protocols and Practice" was created at UCLouvain as a reference textbook for university level networking courses. It is used by various universities in Europe and elsewhere. The ebook is now complemented by various open educational resources covering student assignments, exercises, student projects with code to grade them. Networking educators are encouraged to contribute via: http://www.computer-networking.info *** This space is available to include relevant news from our member institutions. If you would like to share your news (courses, awards, nominations…), please contact: franziska.hauffe@informatics-europe.org. Deadline for the July issue is before the 5 July 2019. New Jobs @ Informatics Europe Job Platform Current openings on the Informatics Europe Job Platform. Your department/institute can advertise open positions on the Informatics Europe job platform too. Extend your search to attract the best! The job service is free of charge for our members. PhD Candidate/Associate Researcher in Software Engineering - paluno, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Deadline: 20 June 2019 PhD Position in Security, Privacy and Trust of Distributed Systems - CWI, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Deadline: 30 June 2019 Two Postdoc Positions on the performance and QoS of Blockchains - Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Deadline: 30 June 2019 Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Information Technology (Artificial Intelligence) - Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. Deadline: 15 July 2019 Two Lecturer/Assistant Professor Positions in Autonomous Driving and Artificial Intelligence - University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. Deadline: 1 August 2019 Visiting Lecturer/PhD candidate in Information Technologies, Computer Hardware, Electronics, Telecommunications, Computer Control/Management and Computer Science - Transport and Telecommunication Institute, Riga, Latvia. Deadline: 31 August 2019



	About the Bulletin The Informatics Europe Bulletin is sent every two months to member representatives of Informatics Europe. Please pass on the Bulletin to any other interested person in your institution. Alternatively, please send us the e-mails of colleagues you would like us to include and we will add them directly to the distribution. For changes, please contact administration@informatics-europe.org. Copyright © 2024 Informatics Europe. All rights reserved.

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