Adam Dunkels from SICS, Sweden, is the winner of the 2008 Cor Baayen Award for a promising young researcher in computer science and applied mathematics. Sixteen finalists competed for this award established by ERCIM in 1995 to honour the first ERCIM President Cor Baayen.
Steven J. Murdoch from University of Cambridge received the best thesis award of the ERCIM Working Group on Security and Trust Management for his excellent Ph.D. thesis "Covert channel vulnerabilities in anonymity systems". Steven's thesis represents an outstanding contribution on the study of privacy and anonymity aspects in real systems and meets all the desired requirements. The evaluation committee particularly favoured its exceptional practical impact.
DANAIM (Danish Research Association for Informatics and Mathematics), a research consortium established by seven major Danish universities and university collaborations, has become a member of ERCIM. Denmark is the nineteenth country to join ERCIM.
Boris Motik from University of Oxford, United Kingdom, has been awarded the 2007 Cor Baayen Award for a most promising young researcher in computer science and applied mathematics by ERCIM.
In a tight competition with 17 finalists, ERCIM has awarded Boris Motik for the outstanding quality of his work concerning reasoning algorithms and systems for Description Logics (DLs) - a family of knowledge representation formalisms with applications in numerous areas of computer science. DLs provide the basis for the Web Ontology Language (OWL) - the ontology language defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that has become the de facto standard for ontology development in fields as diverse as geography, geology, astronomy, agriculture and the life sciences. Boris has already made wide ranging contributions to research, including both new theoretical results, and practical systems that promise to change our notion of tractability in ontology reasoning.
PLERCIM, the newly created research consortium established by two major Polish universities, the University of Warsaw and the University of Wroclaw, has become a member of the ERCIM European Economic Interest Grouping. Poland is the 18th country to join ERCIM.
Keith Jeffery, President of ERCIM, was interviewed in the March issue of /eStrategies Europe/, a quarterly publication announcing and publicising the ICT program in Europe. The goal of this issue was widespread exposure and dissemination for select projects. The article presents the unique role of ERCIM and in particular its commitment to work with European industry. It also includes the list of ERCIM running projects.
A new ERCIM Working Group "eMobility" was established in January 2007. The working group aims to develop a strategic basic research agenda and project proposals in the area of eMobility. To complement the activities of the eMobility European Technology Platform (ETP), the working group focusses on more (theoretical) basic research issues.
The ERCIM Working Group "Matrix Computations & Statistics" is changing its name to "COMPUTING & STATISTICS". The WG will expand its aims and scopes and attract more members from researchers working in the interface of computing and statistics.