Informatics Europe Bulletin - November 2022

Dear Members,

In this issue, we’d like to express again our heartfelt appreciation to everyone’s support in ECSS 2022 last month, making the Summit another remarkable IE event. As mentioned during our Special “Dialogues with Members” session, let’s actively contribute in proposing and jointly developing IE activities to strengthen the European informatics community!

In this issue:

ECSS 2022 – Workforce for the Digital Transformation

Highlights

Following one online and one hybrid summits in the past two years, the 18th edition of the European Computer Science Summit (ECSS 2022) returned as a full in-person event between 24 and 26 October in Hamburg, Germany. Speakers and participants across Europe and from as far as the U.S. joined the summit to present and discuss hot topics related to this year’s main theme “Workforce for the Digital Transformation”. The highlights together with photos are now available on our webpage. Presentation slides are also ready for download on conference schedule page and individual workshop webpages.

Again, a special thank you to our ECSS 2022 co-host University of Hamburg, co-organisers GI – German Informatics Society and SICP – Software Innovation Campus Paderborn, as well as our sponsors iteratec, IT-Executive Club e.V., OSP – Otto Group Solution Provider and ThIS – the interface society, for supporting us in making ECSS 2022 another successful IE event!

Were you with us at ECSS 2022? Help us improve the future editions of ECSS by filling out our feedback survey here!

Best Practices in Education & Minerva Informatics Equality Awards Winners 2022

The winners of IE’s annual awards were announced during the ECSS 2022 awards ceremony:

• Microsoft sponsors IE’s Best Practices in Education Award since 2011. This year the award goes to Technocamps from Wales, UK. Technocamps is a pan-Wales STEM outreach programme founded and based at Swansea University and with a hub in every single university in Wales, UK. It was established in recognition of the challenges to keep up with advances in digital education faced by the nation’s schools, teachers, job seekers and businesses. As winner, Technocamps received an award plaque and a prize of EUR 5,000 sponsored by Microsoft.
• Google sponsors IE’s Minerva Informatics Equality Award since 2016. This year the award goes to two winners: Gender-equality and Anti-harassment Committees at IRISA and Inria Center of University of Rennes in France, and Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien in Austria. Both institutions were chosen for their excellent achievements in developing the careers of female faculty, including retention and promotion. To celebrate this year’s double victory, Google has generously increased the prize to a total of 10,000 EUR, where each winner received a prize of 5,000 EUR to carry on their initiatives. A special runner-up recognition was also given to the WE-CARE (Women Empowerment – Careers and REcognition) programme submitted by the Department of Computer Science, Brunel University London in UK.

ECSS 2023 in Edinburgh – Save the Date!

The next ECSS will be held in Edinburgh, UK from 23 to 25 October, 2023. Mark your calendar and join your international peers to debate the current and future informatics issues and contribute to a stronger European Informatics community. Would you like to support us as co-organizer or sponsor? Email us at administration@informatics-europe.org.

European Commission’s Ethical Guidelines on the Use of Artificial Intelligence & Data in Teaching and Learning for Educators

From July 2021 to October 2022, Prof. Viola Schiaffonati (Politecnico di Milano, IT), served as IE representative at the European Commission Expert Group on AI and Data in Education and Training. The group assisted the Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sports, and Culture with the preparation of practical guidelines for primary and secondary school educators, with concrete practices on the ethical implications of AI and data use in education and training. Besides supporting the cooperation and the exchange of information, expertise, and best practices between the Commission and relevant stakeholders, the members of this group also helped to raise awareness within the education and training sectors about the opportunities and risks of the use of AI and data. As a result of this work, on October 25, the European Commission released the ethical guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence and data in teaching and learning for educators. Informatics Europe is proud to have initiated this important work! You can find more details under the EU commission press corner page, the article on europa.eu and the article on DEAP website.

Register Now for New Cohorts of Online and Residential Academic Leadership Course

Our renowned academic leadership development course returns with two new cohorts in Spring and Summer next year! Designed by and for computer scientists, the course will be facilitated by Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick and Prof. Austen Rainer, senior informatics/computing academics with strong leadership backgrounds and experience, complementing with their scientific evidence-based approaches to positive leadership practice.

Our courses are open to all levels of leaders in informatics and related disciplines, with two possibilities:

• Online Course: for new & emerging leaders. Seven 2-hour online sessions with individual’s in-between work and consultation possibilities from March to May 2023;
• Residential Course: for senior/established leaders. A 4-day course at Krainerhütte, Conference & Event Hotel at Baden bei Wien, Austria, from 27-30 June 2023.

IE President Visits to SIF Meeting in Paris and GRIFO 2022 Meeting in Prague

In October, our President Enrico Nardelli joined the SIF (Societé Informatique de France) meeting in Paris, and GRIFO 2022 (the annual meeting of Czech and Slovak informatics departments/faculties in Prague), to present Informatics Europe’s mission, goals and main activities. The presentations highlighted the reasons that brought our more than 160 institutions to join IE, and how individuals belonging to our IE member institutions can benefit from this membership. We look forward to many collaborations with our current and new IE members.

Association News

Board Meetings

• 25 November (Fri), 16:00-17:00, Zoom
• 27 January (Fri), 09:30-16:30, Zurich

Executive Committee Meetings

• 15 December (Thu), 08:30-16:30, Paris
• 31 January (Tue), 09:00-16:30, Zurich

Don’t Miss These IE Activities

• Register to join our last free “Gender Equality in Informatics” webinar this year on 12 December (Mon), 17:00 (CET) by Marieke Huisman, University of Twente (the Netherlands):
  “Alice & Eve: Recommendations on Hiring and Promoting Women for CS Departments”
• Support our Higher Education Data Portal: one of the most widely used services IE offers! Until 2 December, share your views by filling in a 5-minute survey here, letting us know how you use our Portal and what other data and statistics you are interested in. Want to contribute to our Data Portal with the data/statistics from your country? Join our Data Analysis and Reporting Working Group or email our Data Portal assistant here.

New Informatics Europe Members 

We are very pleased to welcome Neapolis University Pafos, Department of Computer Science (Cyprus) as our latest IE member. They joined a growing IE membership of over 160 institutions from 33 European countries. Find out more about our current members.

Members News

FISEE 2023 – Call for Participation and Submission

The aim of FISEE workshop series is to bring together educators and researchers interested in advancing the quality of education using both classical ideas and novel technology. FISEE 2023 will be the second edition of the workshop having two special themes: "Education in Technology" and "Technology for Education”, with keynotes by Carlo Ghezzi (Politecnico di Milano, IT) and Armando Fox (UC Berkeley, US). The workshop is by invitation only, normally on the basis of a position paper (extended abstract, 2 to 5 pages). If you wish to be considered for invitation, please write to lasersummerschool@gmail.com or submit an abstract to the workshop submission site here before December 5.

Proceedings will be published in a volume of the LASER subseries of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science, after a peer-review process conducted by the Program Committee. Read full details about the Workshop and Submissions here.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam – Patricia Lago Recipient of Honorary Doctorate

The Board of Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) awarded Patricia Lago an honorary doctorate this year, in recognition of her significant scientific contributions to digital transformation and the development of more sustainable software.

Lago has brought sustainability to the international software architecture community and has been a key driver for its establishment in the international software engineering community, too. She has contributed to the definition of various education programs and designed two master programs educating a new generation of software professionals combining software engineering with sustainability-related competences.

Lago’s academic contributions to the computer science research community over the years, are greatly appreciated by the NTNU faculty at the Department of Computer Science. In addition, she has been an inspiration to many young researchers as a female role model in an otherwise male dominated field. She was a core member of IE’s “Women in Informatics Research and Education” (WIRE) Working Group from 2012-2020. She is currently an active member of our COST action EUGAIN project. She was also pne of the keynote speakers of our Professional Development Workshop for Early Career Researchers, at ECSS 2022.

Politecnico di Milano – Micol Spitale and Emanuele Vitali Won the 2022 “Florian Daniel” Award

The 2022 “Prof. Florian Daniel” PhD Thesis Award was awarded ex aequo to Micol Spitale for the thesis “Conversational Agents for Children with Language Impairments: Design and Technology” (supervisor: Prof. Franca Garzotto) and to Emanuele Vitali for the thesis “A Holistic Approach Towards Future Self-Tuning Applications in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Architectures” (supervisor: Prof. Gianluca Palermo).
Both winners were awarded for the relevance of their research to the theme of the announcement, the high scientific relevance in the field of Information Technology and the innovative character of the techniques and results obtained, demonstrated by the excellent scientific production. In particular, Spitale’s work stood out for its significant social impact and for the acknowledgments obtained.

The award was established in 2021 by the Politecnico di Milano to commemorate Prof. Florian Daniel of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, and is awarded annually to the best doctoral theses that address issues related to information engineering, selected among those discussed as part of the PhD programme in Information Technology.

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This space is available to include relevant news from our member institutions. If you would like to share your news, please contact Kit Wan Chui.

New Jobs @ Informatics Europe Job Platform

There are 16 new job openings on the Informatics Europe Job Platform.

As members, you can advertise and extend your search to attract the best candidates for your open positions on the IE job platform free of charge!