Conference Program

Registration starts at 8 a.m.

 Parallel Sessions on Tuesday, 9 October 2007

Keynotes and Invited Speakers

• Wolfgang Boch, European Commission, Information Technologies and Media Directorate General, Head of Unit "Future and Emerging Technologies – Proactive", Belgium
• Allan Fisher, Laureate Eduction, USA
• Thomas Hofmann, Google Inc., Switzerland
• Matthias Jarke, Fraunhofer Society, Germany
• Bernd Mahr, TU Berlin, Germany
• Manfred Nagl, Chairman 4ING, Germany
• Fabien Petitcolas, Microsoft Research, England
• Jörg Steinbach, President SEFI, Belgium
• Jeannette M. Wing, Ass. Director NSF, USA

Strategic directions in computing research in the European ICT Programme [slides]

Wolfgang Boch
European Commission, Information Technologies and Media Directorate General, Head of Unit, Future and Emerging Technologies – Proactive

The Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) theme of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Programme has been supporting advanced research in foundational and long-term topics in Computer Science throughout FP6 (2002–2006) and will continue to do so, in particular, in the FET Proactive Initiatives in FP7 (2007–2013). This keynote will provide an overview on the evolution of the research challenges and some of the achievements related to the "Global Computing" and the "Advanced Computing Architectures" initiatives launched in FP6. Topics addressed by the research projects in these initiatives include, inter alia, resource usage and management, scalability, distribution transparency, and processor architectures and systems architectures for highly complex computing architectures. In the FP7-ICT research programme the focus on long-term challenges in Computer Science has been directed towards a new initiative called "Pervasive Adaptation". Results of the first call for proposals that were to address evolveable and adaptive pervasive systems and networked societies of artefacts that adapt autonomously to changing environments and needs will be presented. Research challenges related to the new initiative "ICT Forever Yours" that will be called for by the end of 2007 in Call3 and which builds on "Pervasive Adaptation" will be outlined. In addition, some preliminary first orientations on the EU strategy for future CS funding as part of the new work programme 2009–10 will be provided.

Wolfgang Boch is working with the European Commission for more than 15 years on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), within the EU Framework Programmes for Research. In January 2007, he has been appointed Head of Unit for "Future and Emerging Technologies – Proactive Initiatives" in the context of Framework Programme VII (2007–2013). FET-Proactive aims to nurture the roots of innovation in Europe. It supports long-term and foundational research in ICT, in particular, radical interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary explorations (such as bio-nano-info-cogno) of new and alternative approaches towards the development of new scientific foundations and technological breakthroughs. The FET proactive Initiatives are granted by the European Union a total funding of 120 M€ for the years 2007–2008. The FET-scheme acts as the pathfinder and incubator for new ideas and themes for long-term research in the area of information and communication technologies.

His background is in Electrical Engineering and Informatics with a focus on feedback and control Systems. He holds a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. Prior to joining the European Commission he worked for 10 years in R&D in the German aerospace and avionics industry. In the European Commission he has held previous positions as Head of Unit on ICT research related to Grid Technologies and Telematics Applications for the Environment.

Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing

Allan Fisher
Laureate Education

While men and women use desktop and Internet applications at nearly equal rates, the participation gap in the development of new computing technologies and applications remains undiminished, and may even be widening. For example, fewer than 20% of the computer science degrees awarded by Ph.D.-granting departments in North America go to women. In the absence of formal barriers, why do so few women choose computer science as a field of study or as a career? Why should we care? What should we do? This talk will address these questions in the context of research and institutional change efforts at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science.

Dr. Allan Fisher is Vice President for New Market Development and Product Launch at Laureate Online Education. He previously was President and CEO of iCarnegie Inc., a subsidiary of Carnegie Mellon University, and before that served until 1999 as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. During that time, he and Dr. Jane Margolis carried out a program of research and intervention that helped to grow the proportion of women entering the computer science program from 7% in 1995 to 42% in 2000. This work is described in their book, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, published in 2002 by MIT Press.

Allan received a bachelor¿s degree in chemistry from Princeton University, studied at the University of Cambridge, and received the Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He serves on a number of advisory committees for projects and organizations working toward diversity in technology fields, including the Anita Borg Institute and the National Research Council Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine.

 Research at Google – A Computational Playground with Lots of Data

Thomas Hofmann

Google Inc.

What is the role of research for a company like Google? The talk will provide insights into the range of research topics that are pursued at Google as well as into the manner of how research and innovation are fostered. Since many research challenges only appear when doing things at large scales, this will include a description of some key aspects of the powerful computational infrastructure that enables large-scale data driven research. Moreover, there will be an in-depth discussion of recent and ongoing research projects conducted in the areas of natural language processing and computer vision. As a side note, the talk will argue that innovation per se is difficult to plan and to direct, but that there are ways to create a culture of research & development within a corporation that yields high volumes of innovation with quick turn around cycles.

Thomas Hofmann received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Bonn in 1997 and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as the University of California at Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute.

In 1999 he joined the Computer Science Department at Brown University as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2004. Between 2004 and 2006, he held a position as a Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, while also serving as the Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems.

He is also co-founder and former Chief Scientist of Recommind Inc, a privately owned company focusing on enterprise search.

Since July 2006, Thomas is a Director of Engineering at Google and one of the site leads of Google's engineering center in Zurich, Switzerland.

Informatics and Innovation: The Fraunhofer ICT Group at the Junction Between Research and Business 

Matthias Jarke
RWTH Aachen University, Fraunhofer Society ICT Group, Gesellschaft für Informatik

The role of Informatics in Europe is changing significantly, due to the increasingly pervasive nature of computer applications in all facets of our lives, industries, and governments, but also due to the changing demographic structure. At least in Germany, application industries begin to outgrow vendor industries as the most important partners for Informatics research, in their attempt to maintain competitive advantage by including more and more software-intensive and networked components in innovative products and services. Automotive and medical technologies are two examples of this trend.

The consequences of this trend towards Informatics as an innovation engine for business and industry rather than just a stand-alone science, which has been formally recognized by the Hightech Strategy of the German Federal Government, are quite severe for future research and education strategies. The presentation will illustrate some examples of these chances and challenges, and outlines the strategic considerations pursued by the Fraunhofer Information and Communication Technologies Group.

Matthias Jarke is full professor for Information Systems at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He is also head of Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Systems and speaker of the Fraunhofer Institute Center at Birlinghoven. He was coordinator of several European research projects and member of two interdisciplinary DFG Collaborative Research Centers. He is also one of the founding directors of the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (B-IT). Since 2004 he is president of the German Informatics Society (GI).

Jarke studied both computer science and business administration and received Ph.D. degree from University of Hamburg. Before joining RWTH Aachen University in 1991, he held positions at New York University and University of Passau, Germany.

How to internationally deal with the intangible values of our national university education? [slides | text]

Bernd Mahr
TU Berlin

In recent years international import and export of university programs has become a business case of a larger scale, as Australia's initiatives towards the Asian market do show. Countries run national programs to send their students to high ranked European universities for a Master's degree or a Ph.D., like Syria and others do. To import excellence and western style education countries build jointly with foreign universities new schools and centers of elite, like Korea, Turkey, Egypt or Pakistan do at the moment. Bachelor or Master programs leading to a joint or double degree have been established to offer students new opportunities and to mutually acknowledge an equal level of quality, like programs linking German universities with universities in China, to name just a prominent example. Foreign universities wish to send their faculty for a teachers training to renowned western universities, like for example universities in Algeria have made first steps to do.

I consider this a wonderful and healthy development, since it brings people together across cultural borders, and helps to gain mutual understanding in an increasingly difficult world. There are good reasons for an international market of education. Among these are differences in demographic development, insufficiencies in the quality of a country's education, the lack of opportunity for students to participate in a country's higher education, and deficiencies of a country's political or economic status in the world. On the other hand there are financial incentives for those who offer, export and sell, since countries and students are usually willing to pay for education.

But are we willing and prepared to export our excellence in education and sell it as a product at a competitive international market? My observation is that only few universities are well enough organized to meet the requirements of their customers, and that our traditions in teaching, which we consider a source of our success, can hardly be exported, as their values are culturally inherited and often intangible in their kind. Our style in making students learn and understand is full of idiosyncrasies. We do not appreciate if students just do what they are asked to. We leave much to their initiative, and we do not believe that their ability for excellence can really be measured by tests. Failure rates during the course of their study, we are deeply convinced, are a good measure for excellence. In order to keep our level of quality we therefore take it that students do not meet our unspecified requirements and fail in large numbers. But these characteristics of our education do not make good features of a product that is to be sold. We have little means in our hands to guarantee our style and level of quality in the education of an exported program. We rather accept that both are not equal to what we would expect in our own faculty or university. We see differences in the pedagogical socialization of the students, in their ability to deal with situations that are underspecified, and in their trust in their own opinion. I am not convinced that we can maintain this approach to excellence in the time to come. In order to stay in the market, thoughts have to be given to new concepts and styles in education and to measures and means that can practically be used without abandoning our convictions of excellence. A reflection on the requirements of our external customers will in the end help us with the reforms we internally need.

The presentation sketches the situation as outlined above, reports, as a study case, on the challenging Project of a Pakistani German University in Lahore, and discusses concepts of quality assurance envisaged for the export of a Bachelor's and a Master's program in Computer Science from TU Berlin to the projected university in Pakistan.

Bernd Mahr is full professor for Formal Models, Logic, and Programming at TU Berlin, Germany. He is author of several books and roughly 150 articles, not only on Informatics and its foundations, but also on philosophical and art-theoretical issues.

As the International Relations Officer of the Faculty for EE & CS, he has been involved in several academic programs and activities in cooperation with foreign countries (e.g. China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria).

Mahr received a Master's degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. degree in computer science both from TU Berlin. Prior to his current affiliation with TU Berlin, he held positions at Technion Haifa, Penn State University and the University of Osnabrück.

One Year of 4ING or Has "Informatics Europe" to become more political? [slides]

Manfred Nagl
RWTH Aachen University, 4ING, German Council of Informatics Departments

4ING, the union of four German councils of departments at universities in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, and informatics was founded in July 2006. The aim of this foundation was to have a stronger position in the political discussion about changes of our university system due to the Bologna Process and due to globalization.

We now can look on activities and experiences of one year. This presentation is on one side to give a survey of our past and future activities and on the other side to draw some conclusions, also w.r.t. Informatics Europe.

Most of our activities were in relation to the Bologna Process. We mainly saw four risks in how the Bologna Process was planned to be implemented in Germany. These risks are:

1. Getting enough academics on Master's level for complicated development processes,
2. Having enough Dissertation projects in engineering and informatics to keep and intensify the relation universities–industries,
3. Preserving the specific character of an engineering dissertation project, and
4. Preserving the diversity and structure of the higher education systems in Germany.

We addressed these problems by political statements for which we got support by diverse organizations, representing industrial branches, professional societies, university and science councils (see below).

It seems that due to our lobbying and argumentation – but also that of others (3) is no longer questioned. As (2) needs a solution of (1) we now are concentrating on (1) and (4). Again, we look for alliances to give our statements and arguments more political weight.

Thus, a big portion of our activities was on networking. Networking was done in direction of politicians at ministries or as parliamentarians, but also for organizations representing different industrial branches (production engineering/process engineering, electrical engineering, IT industry, civil engineering industry), professional societies in mechanical engineering (VDI), electrical engineering (VDE), informatics (GI), civil engineering (VBI), university and science organizations (acatech, HRK, etc.), and many others. Networking did not only address the chairmen of these organizations but also the acting group leaders. This networking is still going on.

Another political activity we are pushing forward now is that the Bologna Process has to be changed. There is a huge amount of conferences and meetings of insiders, nobody can attend, who is not paid as a Bologna specialist. Moreover, the main stakeholders, namely university professors and students, are hardly represented in these discussions. Finally, the Bologna Process is too much in direction of organization and management. We see the problem that the essentials of research and teaching and also real quality get lost.

What does this mean for Informatics Europe? Firstly, we would like to know whether there are political activities in other European countries, similar to those described above, from which we can learn or with which we can exchange experiences. Then, the question arises, whether the other Informatics Europe representatives also see that Informatics Europe must have a political role on a European level. If yes, we should ask what the consequences for the structure and activities of Informatics Europe are.

We from "4ING" and "Council of Informatics Departments" would like to have Informatics Europe as an organization on European level, which has political influence on the Bologna Process and which can give us support on national level w.r.t. upcoming problems. Is that also the opinion of others?

Manfred Nagl is full professor for software engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He is author of five books and editor/coeditor of about 20 books. He authored/coauthored 125 articles in scientific journals, proceedings, and books. During his professional career, he served as a speaker for several Collaborative Research Centers of the DFG (German Research Foundation) in the area of software engineering.

He is now Head of "Fakultätentag Informatik" (German Informatics Faculty Council) and also Head of 4ING, the Association of Faculty Councils of Mechanical Engineering/Process Engineering, Electrical Engineering/Information Technology, Civil Engineering/Geodesy, and Informatics in Germany.

Nagl received a Master's degree in mathematics/physics and a Ph.D. degree in computer science both from University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Prior to his current affiliation with RWTH Aachen, he held positions at Siemens Research Lab and at the universities Koblenz and Osnabrueck.

Accelerating research at the intersection of science and computing [slides]

Fabien Petitcolas
Microsoft Research, Cambridge

The relationship between basic science and industrial innovation and the convergence of the traditional science and software technology are becoming important issues for many of the world's largest corporations. Their successful combination could indeed underpin an important wave of innovations that could change dramatically the life sciences, computing and engineering.

In 2005, Microsoft launched a new research initiative – the European Science Initiative (ESI) – focused on enabling and accelerating research in these important new fields now emerging at the intersection of science and computing.

The initiative aims to play a key role in the development emerging at the intersection of computer science and the sciences, a development set to underpin a new era of science-based innovation, and one that is critical to understanding and addressing some of the most important challenges for the 21st century, from environmental change to our understanding of biology and disease, revolutionising medicine and healthcare.

The European Science Initiative is now well underway, rapidly implementing an ambitious scientific and technical vision and agenda through collaborations with leading scientists in Europe and around the world in the areas of Computational Biology and Computational Ecology and Environmental Science. Additionally two major joint research centres have already been established.

During this presentation I will give more details about these public-private interdisciplinary research collaborations and the way Microsoft supports the vital role of scientific research and innovation, through an industry-leading intellectual capital development programme and several funding opportunities and awards.

Fabien Petitcolas is with the External Research Office at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England. He heads the Intellectual Capital Development which incorporates a number of programmes to support outstanding scientists in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, including the Microsoft Research European Ph.D. Scholarship and European Fellowship programmes. Before joining the External Research Office, Fabien was a researcher within the Security Research Group.

 System versus Professional Accreditation Consequences for Education in Information Sciences

 Jörg Steinbach

TU Berlin, SEFI (European Society for Engineering Education)

Wherever people meet, who are responsible for the design and the quality of curricula taught at institutions of higher education, the term mentioned most is "accreditation". The troublesome point about it is, that depending on their local origin, the experts talk about different processes and corresponding aims. In Germany they discuss system's accreditation, in Brussels they try to shape professional accreditation under the Bologna Process and in Washington they decide on the shaping of this procedure under the constraints of the related accord. And, as may be expected, the different procedures are not compatible!

Starting with the historically oldest activity of those three one has to look at the Washington Accord. Citation: "Established in 1989, the Washington Accord is a multinational, mutual recognition agreement of the substantial equivalency of the engineering accreditation systems of member signatories. The agreement recognizes the substantial equivalency of programs accredited by member signatories and recommends that the graduates of those accredited programs in any of the signatory jurisdictions be recognized by the other jurisdictions as having met the academic requirements for entry into the practice of engineering." In other words, it aims at the assessment of entrance qualification to a professional career. This procedure is outcome oriented and entirely based on program assessment.

Euro-Inf is a European activity, funded by the European Commission and conducted under the aims of the Bologna Process. Citation: "These Standards and Criteria are intended to provide a means for comparing higher education informatics* qualifications in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), in a way that encourages the dissemination of good practice and a culture of continuous improvement of informatics programmes... Accreditation of an informatics degree programme is the primary result of a process used to ensure the suitability of that programme as providing the education base for the entry route to professional practice." The conformity of the principal targets is obvious. Nonetheless, the fact that institutions of higher education in Europe, and there especially the universities, have a self-understanding as research driven institutes, trying to ensure doctorate skills for the third part of the Bologna Process, leads to the consequence that Bologna employability is not rated substantially equivalent to the requirements of the Washington Accord.

And finally: Germany. We interpret accreditation as the substitute to the individual governments of the "Länder" in their former responsibility to issue the permit to run a curriculum at an institute of higher education. This is a process, where the quality management process of the institution plays the governing role, as the "Wissenschaftsrat" has outlined extensively in his publications. This is entirely not compatible with any of the other two approaches. In this contribution the pro and contra shall be discussed and a perspective will be outlined.

Jörg Steinbach is the 1st Vice President of TU Berlin. Being responsible for the university's study programs he is deeply involved in quality management in university education at the national and international level. He currently is CEO of AVI (Coordination Group of German Institutes of Technology for the Accreditation of Engineering Curricula) and Member of the board of ASIIN (the German accreditation agency for Science and Engineering). In this capacity, he is also engaged in negotiations with the Washington Accord. From Oct. 1st, 2007, he is President of the Société Européenne pour la Formation des Ingénieurs (SEFI) in Brussels.

Steinbach graduated from TU Berlin where he received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1985. He then joined the Schering AG where he held several positions including "head of corporate plant safety". After ten years in industry he returned to the university to become a full professor for "plant and safety technology" in 1996. Since 2002 he has been 1st vice president of TU Berlin.

 Looking Ahead for Computing and at the NSF [slides]

Jeannette M. Wing
Carnegie Mellon University, NSF

Looking far out, I will state my vision of computational thinking and posit some big questions for the field of computing. Looking to the more immediate future, I will present high-level goals for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF), describe new and continuing NSF/CISE research and educational initiatives in computing, and outline some broad research themes that suggest a wealth of challenging problems for the academic computer science community to tackle.

Dr. Jeannette M. Wing is the President's Professor of Computer Science in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her S.B. and S.M. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1979 and her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1983, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Currently on leave from CMU, she is the Assistant Director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation.

Professor Wing's general research interests are in the areas of specification and verification, concurrent and distributed systems, and programming languages. Her current focus is on the foundations of trustworthy computing.

Professor Wing was or is on the editorial board of ten journals, including the Journal for the ACM. She has been a member of many advisory boards, including: the Networking and Information Technology (NITRD) Technical Advisory Group to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the National Academies of Sciences's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, ACM Council, the DARPA Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Board, NSF's CISE Advisory Committee, Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, and the Intel Research Pittsburgh's Advisory Board. She is a member of the Sloan Research Fellowships Program Committee. She is a member of AAAS, ACM, IEEE, Sigma Xi, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, and Eta Kappa Nu. Professor Wing is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow.