ECSS 2012 - Highlights
During three beautiful sunny days Barcelona hosted deans, department chairs, research directors and senior faculty from academic and industrial institutions in Europe and beyond united to participate in the 8th edition of the European Computer Science Summit. ECSS is annually organized by Informatics Europe and a member institution; this year the co-organizing partner was the Facultat d'Informatica de Barcelona at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. Close to 100 participants joined the Informatics Europe community contributing to a memorable event.
On November 19 around 50 participants gathered for two pre-summit workshops: Workshop for Deans, Department Chairs and Research Directors and Workshop on the Role and Relevance of Experimentation in Informatics.
The traditional workshop for Deans and Department Chairs addressed this year the topic of Faculty Promotion Policies and Procedures, participants had the opportunity to share their experiences, learn about different systems of faculty promotion in many European countries, exchange best practices and build relationships among different European Informatics research and education institutions.
The main Summit run successfully on November 20 and 21 with the exciting keynote talks of Manfred Nagl, Kees van Hee, Farnam Jahanian, Danny Dolev, Diomidis Spinellis, Walter Gander and Natalia Juristo. Discussion panels, talks selected from submitted contributions and the Informatics Europe sessions and General Assembly complemented the program.
In the social events, lunches and the memorable guided visit to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and dinner in the amazing Oleum restaurant, hosted inside the musem, participants were able to taste the delicious culinary, appreciate the highlights of the art, and warm hospitality of Catalonia.
Overall the conference provided the participants with the unique opportunity to engage with their peers in extremely interesting discussions on topics of great relevance for the future development of the discipline. As remarked by many participants, this unique forum provided yearly by Informatics Europe is of great importance to strength the European Informatics community and contribute to the future development of the research and education in the field.
Below a few photos of the event by Cristina Pereira and Bertrand Meyer.
