Informatics Europe Bulletin: ECSS 2020 Highlights

Informatics Europe

Informatics Europe Bulletin - November 2020

Dear Members,

Welcome to the November edition of our monthly Bulletin. We hope you enjoy it! 

In this issue:

ECSS 2020 - Diversity in Informatics Research and Education

Highlights

The 16th edition of the European Computer Science Summit, ECSS 2020, with the main theme 'Diversity in Informatics Research and Education' was held online via Zoom, 26-28 October. The Summit was a platform of inspiring presentations and lively discussions tackling questions such as “Does Informatics as a field benefit from interdisciplinary collaboration?”, “In which interdisciplinary areas does Informatics have the biggest (potential for) impact?”, “How should interdisciplinary research and teaching (including doctoral education) be organised?” and “How diversity (gender and other dimensions) can help to strengthen Informatics Departments?”
 
Visit the ECSS 2020 website to find out more about the highlights of the various conference sessions and workshops.

Speakers' Contributions

The slides of the presentations and the video recordings of the various sessions are now available for download on the conference schedule website.

After ECSS is before ECSS - Save the date!

Next year we are travelling to Spain, where the ECSS 2021 will be held in Madrid from 25 to 27 October, 2021. Add the dates to your calendar!

Winners 2020 Best Practices in Education and Minerva Informatics Equality Awards

At a special Award Ceremony during the ECSS 2020 Informatics Europe announced the winners of its two annual Awards:

  • The winner of the 2020 Informatics Europe Best Practices in Education Award is ‘Master of IT’, which was submitted by a Coordination Committee on behalf of Aalborg University, Aarhus University and University of Southern Denmark.
  • Department of Computer Science, University College London won the 5th Minerva Informatics Equality Award in recognition of outstanding support for the transition of female PhD and Postdoctoral Researchers into Faculty positions. 

Both winners had the opportunity to present their projects and achievements for the ECSS 2020 audience.

Kick-off Meeting COST Action European Network for Gender Balance in Informatics

The COST Action EUGAIN - European Network for Gender Balance in Informatics - had its online kick-off meeting on 19 and 20 October 2020. Members from 37 countries, over 60 colleagues from all over Europe and Israel actively participated in the first Management Committee meeting of the Action (one the highest attendance in first MC meetings of the COST Association history!). The meeting had lively discussions during breakout sessions on the topics of the Action Working Groups, where people could share their ideas and experiences and express their interest in contributing to the different topics. Informatics Europe has been elected the Grant Holder institution and will manage the Action along the planned four years. Both Letizia Jaccheri (current WIRE Chair) and Cristina Pereira (Executive Director), as well other members of the WIRE working group, were elected for the main leading roles of the Action.
 
More about the COST Action can be found here.

Submission COST Action European Research Network for Informatics Education in School

Informatics Europe recently submitted a new COST Action application proposing to establish a network on research in Informatics Education in School. The main aim of this COST Action is to provide a solid and uniform foundation, as well as policy support, for implementing Informatics Education in school at all levels, from primary to upper secondary through building and strengthening a truly European network of researchers in Informatics education. The initial network of proposers includes 34 researchers from 27 countries. Results will be known Spring 2021.

Association News

Board Elections

At the 2020 Annual General Assembly held online via Zoom on 27 October, Board Elections for the term 2021-2022 took place with the following results:

  • Standa Živný (University of Oxford) as new Board Member;
  • Michael Caspersen​ (It-vest - networking universities) as re-elected Board Member.
In addition, Jean-Marc Jézéquel (IRISA/University of Rennes) who was already a Board member was appointed new Vice-President.

We congratulate them all for their (re-)election and wish a successful work in the organization.
 
The following Board Members are finishing their terms at the end of 2020:

  • Mehdi Jazayeri (Università della Svizzera italiana) as Vice-President;
  • Hannes Werthner (TU Wien, Austria).

We thank them both for their invaluable contribution and great commitment to Informatics Europe over the past years and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.

Board Meetings

  • Thursday, 26 November, 13:00-16:30, Skype (Executive Committee Only)
  • Friday, 27 November, 16:00-17:00, Zoom
  • Thursday, 28 January, 9:30-16:30, Skype (Executive Committee Only)
  • Friday, 29 January, 9:30-16:30, Zoom
  • Friday, 26 February, 16:00-17:00, Zoom.

Don’t forget: As a member representative, you can submit agenda topics and participate as an observer in Board meetings. Let us know in case you are interested in this offer!

Members News

Politecnico di Milano, Italy - dEsign enVironmEnt foR Extreme-Scale big data analytics on heterogeneous platforms

On 1 October 2020, the EVEREST consortium held the (virtual) kick-off meeting of a new 3-year H2020 project. EVEREST (dEsign enVironmEnt foR Extreme-Scale big data analyTics on heterogeneous platforms) aims at developing a holistic approach for co-designing computation and communication in a heterogeneous, distributed, scalable and secure system for HPDA. This is achieved by simplifying the programmability of heterogeneous and distributed architectures through a "data-driven" design approach, the use of hardware-accelerated AI, and through efficient monitoring of the execution with a unified hardware/software paradigm. EVEREST proposes a design environment that combines state-of-the-art, stable programming models, and emerging communication standards, with novel and dedicated domain-specific extensions. The EVEREST project is receiving funding for 5 million Euros and involves 10 partners from six different countries (Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia). Politecnico di Milano is one of the key partners of the project. The POLIMI team is composed of Prof. Christian Pilato, who is also the EVEREST Scientific Coordinator, Prof. Fabrizio Ferrandi, and Prof. Gianluca Palermo. They are investigating design methods for high-level synthesis, flexible memory managers, and autotuning. These techniques will be used to accelerate computational kernels, coordinate the data transfers among the system nodes, and dynamically adapt the application behaviour.

You can find further information here.

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