Welcome address
Dear Colleagues,
The European Computer Science Summit (ECSS 2017) will be celebrating its 13th edition. The European Informatics community will meet in the lively and colourful city of Lisbon, Portugal, on October 23-25, 2017, hosted by Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
The theme of the ECSS 2017 will be “Informatics Connects!” We are all well aware that the ongoing digital revolution and globalization is deeply affecting education and research in Informatics, as well as the role Informatics plays in society.
On the one hand, Informatics is driving this digital revolution, creating a huge demand for specialized graduates and professionals. It is also contributing to developing innovative, fundamental approaches and tools for other disciplines: data-driven science, personalized medicine, manufacturing, architecture, finance and the creatives industries amongst others.
On the other hand, Informatics is a global discipline that remains largely unaffected by local or country-specific regulations. That is why education and talent-search know no boundaries, as we can see from the ever-increasing number of joint programmes, online courses (MOOCs) and the presence of major IT companies all across the globe.
However, a key challenge in education and university research for our discipline is to properly manage this increased “connectivity”. In education, the demand for Informatics training across disciplines, joint programmes and countries is rising. Research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary and demand is rising for partnerships through which companies and organisations can reap the benefits of connectivity.
ECSS 2017 will gather a selection of distinguished speakers to address the challenges that connectivity represents in its various forms; it will feature talks on selected “hot” topics, panel discussions and examples of successful stories.
To complete the programme, the winners of the 6th edition of the Best Practices in Education Award and of the 2nd edition of the Minerva Informatics Equality Award will be revealed at a special Award Ceremony. This ceremony will be organised jointly with ERCIM and include their annual Cor Baayen Award, which is given to a promising young researcher in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics.
For the day before the main summit starts, October 23, we have planned the traditional Pre-Summit Workshop for Deans and Department Heads, chaired this year by Mehdi Jazayeri, University of Lugano, Switzerland, and Hannes Werthner, Vienna University of Technology, Austria. The workshop is a forum for discussion and exchange of practical experiences and proven successful strategies on the main issues encountered when managing faculties, departments or research work.
Like its previous editions, ECSS 2017 promises to be an enriching and memorable experience, both personally and professionally, for all participants! We are looking forward to welcoming you in Lisbon!
General Chairs
Luís Caires: Department of Informatics, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa,
Lynda Hardman: Informatics Europe President, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) and Utrecht University
Program Chairs
José Luiz Fiadeiro: Department of Computer Science, Royal Holloway University of London
Markus Püschel: Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich.