Supported by IE's Ethics and Diversity & Inclusion Working Groups, this Workshop was held on Tuesday afternoon, 29 October and chaired by  Dympna O'Sullivan, TU Dublin (Ireland) and Simona Motogna, Babeş-Bolyai University (Romania).

In today's interconnected and diverse world, it is imperative that Informatics programmes embrace diversity and promote inclusion. This workshop offered a comprehensive examination of how diversity and inclusion are taught as integral components of Informatics disciplines along with an exploration of potential avenues for further enhancement.

Focusing on the findings from the Inclusion4EU and EUGAIN projects, the workshop focused on the following crucial aspects of cultivating diversity in Informatics disciplines:

1. Understanding Diversity and Inclusion Concepts: Participants delved into the significance of diversity and inclusion within the realms of Informatics education.
2. Curriculum Design: Participants explored methods for integrating diversity and inclusion into existing Informatics processes and curricula, ensuring exposure to diverse perspectives and experiences for students.
3. Interactive co-design session: Engaging in a collaborative task with other workshop participants, attendees assessed existing technologies, confronted challenges, and considered how such methods can be used to better promote diversity and inclusion in Informatics education.

Workshop Rundown
Speaker bios and abstracts are available on the ECSS speakers page by clicking their photos.

13:00-13:05   Introduction

13:05-13:20   Inclusion4EU project presentation by Dympna O’Sullivan, TU Dublin (Ireland)

13:20-13:35   EUGAIN project presentation by Simona Motogna, Babeş-Bolyai University (Romania)

13:35-13:45   Q&A session

13:45-14:15   Keynote speech "Diversity and inclusion: training activities of SoBigData EU Research Infrastructure" by Antinisca di Marco, University of L'Aquila (Italy)

14:20-15:00  Interactive collaborative activity facilitated by Claudia Rivera, Svetlana Hensman and Helen Sheridan (TU Dublin)
In a co-design session focused on evaluating assistive technology, participants collaboratively engaged in a dynamic hands-on activity to assess various assistive devices. Through guided discussions and interactive demonstrations, the session aimed to identify strengths and areas for improvement in the technology, fostering a user-centered approach to enhance functionality, usability, and accessibility. The session provided workshop participants with hands-on experience of co-design methodologies.

***

Inclusion4EU Erasmus+ project and EUGAIN COST Action are co-funded by the European Commission. The research of these projects has been collated in dedicated research reports that will be presented during the workshop. Informatics Europe is a partner in both projects and the grant holder manager of EUGAIN.

ECSS (European Informatics Leaders Summit) is the main event organized by Informatics Europe yearly. Informatics Europe welcomes proposals from its members to co-organize editions of the conference. Interested members can submit bids following the guidelines described on this page and positively contribute to the development of the European informatics research community while boosting their international visibility. More information about the summit's history, target audience and purpose can be found here.

At present, we are looking for bids concerning the summit editions from 2026 onwards. The deadline for submitting a bid for 2026 is 15 May, 2025. Bids submitted after this date will be considered for the following editions of the summit.

Guidelines for submitting bids: 

Members of Informatics Europe may submit bids considering the ECSS General Organizational Guidelines and containing at least the following information:

• Description of conference venue and facilities, ideally with a couple of pictures;
• Travel time/options from the closest well-served international airport;
• Estimate of accommodation costs;
• Rough planned budget for the event;
• A description of who will be the GC and other members of the organising committee, including information about the previous conference organising experience;
• Statements of support from the proposed hosting institutions and/or locals.

The Informatics Europe Board may ask the authors of the bid to provide additional or more detailed information before a decision is taken. Pre-selected bids shall be presented at one of the Informatics Europe Board meetings by a member of the proposed organizing committee, preferably the proposed GC.

Frequently asked questions:

Looking for a targeted and impactful approach to engage with the leaders in the European informatics research community?

Explore our sponsorship packages that enable you to enhance your brand's visibility, showcase your products and services, and cultivate valuable collaborations with informatics partners of all kinds. This extends beyond the European Informatics Leaders Summit - ECSS and empowers a wide range of Informatics Europe activities!

Our prestigious ECSS sponsors and partners over the years:

Joining the Esteemed Informatics Europe Sponsorship Hall of Fame

As sponsors, your vital involvement enables us to deliver an exceptional experience for ECSS attendees and push the advancement of informatics research and education to new heights. Your support extends beyond ECSS, encompassing all Informatics Europe activities, benefiting a community of nearly 200 informatics institutions in over 30 European countries. You will gain visibility to a network of 50,000+ informatics researchers and over half a million informatics students! Seize this unique sponsorship opportunity that yields lasting and significant outcomes - join us in building a promising future for the field of informatics and beyond!

Contact

To customize your sponsorship opportunities, please reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We look forward to creating a mutually beneficial sponsorship plan with you.

As an exclusive benefit to our members, we offered the possibility to include some printouts about your institution free-of-charge in the ECSS 2022 participant packages. We also offered members the possibility to publish these materials virtually on a special section of our ECSS 2022 website, called Members Spotlight.

Examples of materials include:

• a flyer describing an academic program
• an announcement of a conference, seminar series, summer school...
• a call for papers
• an announcement of a new book or other publication
• a call for joint proposals
• generally anything that fits within the mission and goals of Informatics Europe and can be of interest to ECSS participants.

In order to take advantage of this benefit, we accepted submission according to the following instructions:

(for virtual materials, by Oct 16th)

• a PDF document, for publish and download on our ECSS website section Members Spotlight, AND
• a JPG/PNG image of the cover, as the front image of your document on the gallery; it must have the following dimensions: 500 (horizontal) x 625 (vertical) pixels.

Important note: these two files must have a concise self-referring name consisting of maximum 7 words (e.g.UZH-Informatics-Department-Flyer; UCLouvain-CS-Master-Program-Flyer, etc.)

(for physical materials to be distributed at the ECSS 2022 venue in Hamburg)

• By Oct 2nd:  an electronic copy (PDF/JPG) of the material you’d like to include. The materials should be a single sheet, A4 or smaller unless otherwise agreed.
• By Oct 18th: no more than 150 printed copies of the document delivered to Germany by post, with exact amount required and delivery address confirmed by email.

You can find first examples of how your materials would be published from our previous Members Spotlight.

Thank you for taking the advantage of this offer to advertise your activities to the ECSS 2022 participants.

The European Computer Science Summit has been organised annually by Informatics Europe since 2005. In fact, the origins of Informatics Europe date back to the first ECSS held at ETH Zurich in 2005, when for the first time, heads of Informatics departments throughout Europe met to discuss critical issues and common concerns related to their discipline. Informatics Europe continues to organize the summit since then

Today, ECSS still gathers deans, department chairs, and heads of research groups of leading European Computer Science and Informatics faculties, departments as well as public and private research institutes. Additional workshops and sessions in recent years have broadened the scope of the discussions to include all leaders and decision-makers in Informatics in Europe.

The Summit is devoted to all aspects of Informatics: education, research, funding, entrepreneurship, management, career development, and policies.

The high calibre of the speakers, since the very first Summit in 2005, has established the ECSS as one of the most prominent meetings of the European Informatics community.

Purpose of ECSS

• Debate the future of informatics, its role, and influence in both academy and society.
• Expand the international network of deans, heads of departments, and group-leading researchers in informatics.
• Provide a forum for discussion and exchange of solutions and best practices on common issues.
• Examine ways in which deans, department heads, and group-leading researchers in informatics can work together to improve teaching and research, implement the Bologna process, can influence the policies of their universities, governments and the EU, and take joint initiatives on common issues.
• Provide opportunities for liaisons with other groups pursuing common interests.

 

Some of the most influential academics, as well as key industry, government and learned societies leaders have been among the keynote speakers. They have helped to establish ECSS as one of the most prominent meetings of the European Information and Computer Science community.

Academy

• Ewan Birney - European Bioinformatics Institute
• Manfred Broy - TU München (Germany)
• Marie-Paule Cani - Ecole Polytechnique (France)
• Stefano Ceri - Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
• Robert L. Constable - Cornell University (USA)
• Roberto Di Cosmo - INRIA (France)
• Anna Cox - University College London (UK)
• Hannes Federrath - University of Hamburg / German Informatics Society (Germany)
• Anthony Finkelstein - Alan Turing Institute, UK government (UK)
• Carlo Ghezzi - Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
• Georg Gottlob - University of Oxford (UK)
• Thomas Gross - ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
• Wendy Hall - University of Southampton (UK)
• Mark Harman, Meta Platforms Inc. and UCL (UK)
• Monika Henzinger - Univerity of Vienna (Austria)
• Manuel Hermenegildo - IMDEA / UPM (Spain)
• Marina  Jirotka - University of Oxford (UK)
• Elham Kashefi - UK National Quantum Computing Centre (UK)
• Maarja Kruusmaa - Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia)
• Mirella Lapata - University of Edinburgh (UK)
• Friedemann Mattern - ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
• Kurt Mehlhorn - Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik (Germany)
• Bertrand Meyer - ETH Zurich (Switzerland)
• John Mylopoulos - Univerity of Trento (Italy)
• Bart Preneel - KU Leuven (Belgium)
• Walter Quattrociocchi - Sapienza Università di Roma (Italy)
• Wilhelm Schäfer - University of Paderborn (Germany)
• Joseph Sifakis - University of Grenoble (France)
• Judith Simon - University of Hamburg (Germany)
• Eugene Spafford - Purdue University (USA)
• Moshe Vardi - Rice University (USA)
• Jochen Viehoff - Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (Germany)
• Alexander Wolf - University of California at Santa Cruz (USA)
• Andreas Zeller - Saarland University (Germany)

Associations

• Ed Lazowska - CRA
• J Strother Moore - CRA
• Jon Oberlander -  SICSA
• John White - ACM

Government/ Policy/ Funding

• Franco Acordino - EU/EC
• Isidro Laso Ballesteros - EU/EC
• Jean-Pierre Bourguignon - ERC
• Janice Cuny - NSF
• Georgi Dimitrov - EU/EC
• Danny Dolev - ERC
• Farnam Jahanian - NSF
• Willem Jonker -  EIT Digital KIC
• Arthur Lupia - NSF
• André Richier - EU/EC
• Sonia Piedrafita Tremosa - European Education and Culture Executive Agency
• Anne-Marie Sassen - Head of Unit "Programme Managers Office" at European Innovation Council and SME Executive Agency
• Jeannette Wing - NSF

Industry

• Sailesh Chutani - Microsoft
• Mark Harris - Intel
• Andrew Herbert – Microsoft
• Roland Jakab - Ericsson
• Leslie Lamport - Microsoft Research
• Michael Müller-Wünsch - Otto GmbH & Co KG
• Africa Real - HP
• Alfred Spector - Google
• Liba Svobodova - IBM
• Pamela Zave - AT&T Labs
• Ruoyi Zhou - IBM

Entrepreneurs

• François Bancilhon - Data Publica
• Jaan Tallinn - Skype

**Note that the affiliation indicated was the one at the time of their participation in the respective ECSS. Some speakers have changed affiliation since then.

 

 

 

ECSS 2022 was held from 24 to 26 October 2022 in Hamburg, with the main theme "Workforce for the Digital Transformation". The conference was hosted by the University of Hamburg and co-organised by GI - Gesellschaft für Informatik and SICP - Software Innovation Campus Paderborn.  

The annual European Computer Science Summit is the only place, where leaders and decision-makers in Informatics/Computer Science in Europe gather to debate strategic themes and trends related to research, education, and policies.

 

 

ECSS 2023 was held from 23 to 25 October 2023 in Edinburgh, UK, with the main theme "Informatics: Shaping the Future". The conference was hosted and co-organised by the School of Informatics of the University of Edinburgh.  

ECSS is the flagship summit for the leadership of the Informatics research community in Europe.

The only summit devoted to crucial and timely strategic issues and trends regarding all aspects of informatics in Europe. It covers subjects such as education, research, funding, entrepreneurship, management, and career development. The high calibre of the speakers, since the very first Summit in 2005, has established ECSS as one of the most prominent meetings of the European informatics community. A must-go event for research and education leaders and change-makers at all levels, in informatics and related disciplines.

ECSS 2023: activities organised by our Summit Committee:

Thank you for your support at ECSS 2023. We look forward to meeting you at our next Summit in Malta on 28-30 Oct, 2024!

Read more about ECSS: