Italian Research Minister at GMD
by Siegfried Münch
In the near future, German-Italian scientific and economic cooperation will be intensified in various fields. This is the outcome of a three days' visit the Italian Minister for Science and Research, Professor Luigi Berlinguer, paid to some institutions in the Cologne/Bonn area from 12-14 January 1997. Within the programme organized by the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology, the Italian Research Minister stayed at GMD on 13 January 1997.
Since several years, GMD and the Italian CNR have been cooperating intensively within the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, the association of national European informatics institutes. Therefore, Minister Berlinguer wanted to discuss issues of bilateral cooperation while staying at GMD. Main focus of the programme for the Minister's visit to GMD was the presentation of some important research projects conducted by GMD.
Italian Minister for Science and Research, Professor Luigi Berlinguer. (Photo: Söntgerath)
In her welcome address, the parliamentary undersecretary of the German Federal Research Ministry, Cornelia Yzer, emphasized the importance of the German-Italian cooperation in the field of information technology. In his address, Professor Luigi Berlinguer pointed out that his visit to Germany was also to give new impetus to German-Italian cooperation. The Italian Ambassador in Bonn, Enzo Perlot, indicated that the Italian Embassy would intensively further German-Italian scientific contacts also in the future.
The Chairman of GMD's Executive Board, Dennis Tsichritzis, outlined the domains of information technology being of current interest at European level and therefore also of a special importance to German-Italian cooperation, namely communication, bioinformatics and computational medicine. GMD's researchers presented some projects conducted in these domains.
Wolfgang Prinz from GMD's Institute for Applied Information Technology presented the POLITEAM project dealing with the information technology support of governmental bodies working in Berlin and Bonn. Thomas Lengauer from GMD's Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing explained how to model molecular structures and how to determine the properties of biological agents by means of computers. A possible support of cardiac diagnosis and telecommunication by enabling systems and 3D ultrasound imaging was presented by Thomas Berlage from GMD's Institute for Applied Information Technology. After these presentations, ten researchers described some examples of bilateral cooperation ranging from high-energy physics to space research.
Please contact:
Eckart Bierdümpel - GMD
Tel: +49 2241 14 2256
E-mail: eckart.bierduempel@gmd.de