Mission and History
Our mission:
Informatics Europe represents the academic and research community in Informatics1 in Europe and neighbouring countries. Our mission is to empower and unite the European informatics community, find concerted positions, act on shared priorities and support policy-making in Informatics Education, Research, and its Social Impact across Europe. We do so by fostering unity in the variety of our member institutions and promoting pan-European collaboration.
In particular, we aim to empower our members to:
- Create opportunities for joint initiatives and knowledge exchange between academia & industry & society.
- Engage with society on the nature and impact of Informatics and advocate for Informatics in European policy discussions.
- Promote quality standards and best practices in research, education, and knowledge transfer.
- Foster ethical and responsible Informatics teaching and research.
- Nurture talent, promoting inclusion and assuring a pipeline of diverse leaders with a broad understanding of the discipline.
Our history
The origins of Informatics Europe date back to the first European Computer Science Summit (ECSS) held at ETH Zurich in 2005, later renamed the European Informatics Leaders Summit in 2024.
On 21 October 2005, the 1st ECSS brought together, for the first time, heads of Informatics and Computer Science departments throughout Europe. This landmark event was a joint undertaking of the Informatics departments of the two branches of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology: EPFL (Lausanne) and ETHZ (Zurich). The initiative attracted immediate and widespread interest far beyond its original scope. A report on the first ECSS and the background behind Informatics Europe was published in 2026 in the Communications of the ACM.
Besides the keynotes, talks, panels and workshops, the most important result of the Summit was the unanimous view that European Computer Scientists urgently needed an organisation with aims and scope similar to those of the CRA in the US, extended — in light of the situation in Europe — to cover education as well as research. As a result, the 'European University and Research Organization for the Technologies of Informatics and Computer Science (EuroTICS)' was created with the aim to become the recognized voice of the European informatics community, including both universities and research centres. The organisation's name was later changed to "Informatics Europe".
The organisation's initial bylaws were approved at the first General Assembly during the 2nd ECSS on October 16, 2006, at the ETH Zurich. Informatics Europe was hosted and managed by ETH Zurich until 2011, when it became a fully independent non-profit organisation based in Zurich.
Bertrand Meyer, ETH Zurich, one of the founding members of the organisation, served as its first President from 2006 to 2011. Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano, was the second President from 2012 to 2015. Lynda Hardman, CWI / Utrecht University was the third President, serving from 2016 to 2017. Enrico Nardelli, from Università di Roma 'Tor Vergata' was the fourth president from 2018 to 2023. The current President, Jean-Marc Jézéquel, took office in January 2024.
1). The term Informatics represents what is also called, depending on the country, Computer Science, Computing, Computer Engineering, IT, ICT.