Ten Years ERCIM
Amsterdam 4-5 November 1999
ERCIM celebrated its 10th anniversary with a two days event in Amsterdam from 4-5 November 1999. Over 400 participants including representatives from ERCIM institutes and invited guests from industry and the political community attended the events.
The first day, 4 November, was targeted at researchers from ERCIM member institutes. It saw some 20 presentations by ERCIM researchers and invited speakers about research related issues and state-of-the-art presentations, covering a variety of research areas under the slogan ‘ERCIM - a Virtual Laboratory for IT Research in Europe’:
- Krzysztof Apt, CWI: ‘Constraint Programming, or at the Crossroads of Mathematics and Computer Science’
- Bernard Lang, INRIA: ‘Libre Software’
- Stelios Orphanoudakis, FORTH: ‘Information Society Technologies in Healthcare’
- Dennis Tsichritzis, GMD: ‘The changing art of research
- Jan van Schuppen, CWI: ‘Control and System Theory’
- Achim Sydow, GMD: ‘New Perspectives of Environmental Modelling and Simulation’
- Keith Jeffery, CLRC: ‘What’s next in Databases’
- Fadi El Dabaghi, INRIA: ‘Integrated Information System for Modelling and Management of Water Resources: Trends and Perspectives’
- Tamás Roska, SZTAKI: ‘Analogic Cellular Array Computing - A new bridge between Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Mathematics’
- David Duce, CLRC: ‘W3C State of the Art’
- Pentti Kanerva, SICS: ‘Stochastic Pattern Computing: A New Computing Paradigm for AI’
- Aarno Lehtola, VTT: ‘Engineering multilingual services on the World Wide Web’
- Yves Robert, ENS Lyon: ‘Algorithms and Tools for (distributed) Heterogeneous Computing’
- Constantine Stephanidis, FORTH: ‘Designing for All in the Information Society’
- Dominique Pignon, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris: ‘Perspectives of Development of Virtual Reality and its Public’
- Jussi Karlgren, SICS: ‘Non-topical factors in information access’
- Peter Kacsuk, SZTAKI: ‘Metacomputing’
- Laurent Kott, INRIA: ‘INRIA’s Spin-off policy’
- Kristina Höök, SICS: ‘Social navigation and un-orthodox views on usability’
- Jan Friso Groote, CWI: ‘On the reliability of software’
- Leonello Tarabella and Marco Cardini, CNR: Demonstration of CNR’s Computer Music Lab.
Abstracts of the presentations can be found at the ERCIM website at: http://www.ercim.eu/10years/Demonstrations
In conjunction with the presentations on both days, demonstrations of current research at ERCIM institutes were given:
- CYCAB - Self-service vehicles for the cities of tomorrow (INRIA)
- PERSONA - Tools for Social Navigation (SICS)
- Virtual Reality for Scientific Visualization – a demonstration of an interactive virtual environment that gives the scientist the the illusion of immersing into a virtual world (CWI).
- IMU - Integrated Publishing in Multimedia Networks (VTT)
- ERCIM Technical Reference Digital Library – a digital collection of the technical documentation produced by ERCIM scientists. (CNR)
- VEP - Visual Enabling for Precision Surgery – a computer-based three-dimensional (3D) image guidance system for neurosurgical operations (GMD)
- The SNAKE - a robot for difficult inspection tasks. (GMD)
- The AVANTI Web Browser developed in the framework of the AVANTI project that aimed to address the interaction requirements of disabled individuals using Web-based multimedia applications and services. (FORTH)
- DialWeb - this project implements an information service (a music and concert event guide) which can be accessed through a telephone-based voice browser as well as through a conventional graphical browser. (SICS)
- A real-time, intelligent advisory system – A new SCADA system was introduced in the 120/400kV Substation of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant (SZTAKI)
- MPEG7: The new member of the MPEG family, called ‘Multimedia Content Description Interface’ (GMD)
A more detailed description of the demos as well as links to their websites are available at the ERCIM website at http://www.ercim.eu/10years/.
Symposium
At the Symposium: ‘ERCIM – leveraging World Class R&D for Business and Society’ on Friday 5 November, leaders from industry gave their vision on the future of European R&D:
- Gerard van Oortmerssen, Director of CWI, President of ERCIM: ‘ERCIM - The Challenge of the Next Century’ (see article)
- Heikki Hämmäinen, Vice President Nokia Networks: ‘Towards the Mobile Information Society’ (see article)
- Alexander Rinnooy Kan, Executive Board ING: ‘Technology and its Impact on the Financial Services Industry’ (see article)
- Roger Needham, Director of Microsoft Research Europe: ‘Microsoft Research - What and Why’ (see article)
- Dieter Klumpp, Managing Director of Alcatel/SEL Foundation: ‘INITI@TIVE D21’ (see article)
- Jacques-Louis Lions, Institut de France: ‘The Future of Scientific Computation’ (see article)
The symposium closed with a discussion on the future of the Web and Europe’s role following a statement via video by Tim Berners Lee, President of the Web Consortium, recorded at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and moderated by Dick Bulterman, Director of Oratrix Development (see article).
