Computer Science Department

West University of Timisoara was founded on 1944 as a classic university meant to be representative for the Western part of Romania (more than 23000 students now). The Faculty of Mathematics (Mathematics and Computer Science currently) was one of the first faculties founded within the university, in 1948. Now it has two departments: Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science, the last starting its activity in 1971. The Computer Science Department of the West University of Timisoara is nationally recognized as one of the first ten strongest Romanian academic groups involved in fundamental and applied research, teaching and development activities in computer science and information technologies.

The department has over 65 position (35 full-time members), including academic staff, and research staff. More than 900 students are enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Computer Science and Information Technologies. PhD studies are oriented towards artificial intelligence, distributed computing, and computational mathematics. The high experience of the team in project management is proved by more than fifty national and more than fifteen international research and development projects in the last ten years.

The Department of Computer Science offers two study programs, one in “Informatics” and the other in “Applied Informatics”. The study program in Informatics is offered in Romanian and English while Applied Informatics is only in Romanian.

There are three study programs at master level: “Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Computing” (in Romanian and in English), “Software Engineering” and “Applied Informatics in Science, Technology and Economics”.

The research directions on which are offered positions for PhD students are: “Artificial Intelligence” (prof. Viorel Negru), “Parallel and Distributed Computing” (prof. Stefan Maruster), “Computational Mathematics” and “Automated Reasoning” (prof. Tudor Jebelean).

Modular courses (1 – 3 months): • Advanced data bases(SQL Oracle) • SQL/PL-SQL Oracle • WEB technologies based on SQL • High level programming languages • UNIX programming and administration • Distributed programming • Hybrid methods for modeling and simulation

Postgraduate courses for specialization in Computer Science: •Secondary specialization for high school teachers. •Computer Science specialization for IT industry

The main research activities are focused on: multi-agent systems, knowledge engineering, expert systems, data mining, evolutionary computing, neural networks, parallel / distributed / Web / Grid / cloud computing, workflow technologies, image processing, e-learning, computational mathematics. There are four research groups: 1. Research group in “Parallel, Distributed and Grid Computing”. Main topics: grid and web services for symbolic computing, numerical simulations and remote sensing; workflows design and execution; parallel numerical computing; high performance computing. 2. Research group in “Artificial Intelligence”. Main topics: intelligent systems, intelligent front-end, intelligent ambient, multi-agent systems, knowledge discovery, recommender systems, and automated reasoning, ontologies, semantic web. 3. Research group in “Computational Intelligence”. Main topics: evolutionary algorithms in optimization and data mining, nature inspired meta-heuristics, dynamics of neural networks, and membrane computing 4. Research group in “Computational Mathematics”. Main topics: numerical methods for nonlinear equations, estimation of stability domains, mathematical models in nano-technologies, computational methods in flight control. In the frame of Computer Science Research Centre there are two research laboratories dedicated to Artificial Intelligence, respectively Parallel and Distributed Computing. The department cluster with 50 CPUs is integrated in the SEE-Grid infrastructure and monitored in EGEE. A new cluster with 400 processors and 15TB will be functional at the end of 2010 year.

In the last five years, the department members have published over two hundreds journal articles, conference papers, and books, with a strong impact at national level and recognized at international level. The department members were implied in FP5 and FP6 program (AgentLink II; AgentLink III; EGEEE II; IST-FP6 project VISP: Virtual Internet Service Provider; FP7 program (SeeGRID – SCI and EGEE III); bilateral project with Ukraine, Austria; several projects financed by French, Austrian and German governments. Currently the department members are strongly involved in the Ghiseo (ESA project); SPRERS (SA - FP7 project); two COST projects; bilateral projects with Austria and Poland. International projects: • SPRERS – Strengthening the Participation of Romania at European R&D in Software Services, FP7-CSA, 2010-2011, http://www.sprers.eu • Gisheo – On Demand Grid Services for High Education and Training in Earth Observation, ESA PECS, 2008-2010, http://gisheo.info.uvt.ro • SEE-Grid-Sci – SEE Grid Infrastructure for Regional eScience, FP7-eRI, 2007-2010 • EGEE-III – Enabling Grids for eScience, FP7 INFSO RI, 2008-2010 • InfraGrid – Service oriented Grid Infrastructure, EU Structural funds, 2009-201 • Bilateral projects with Austria and Ukraine National projects: • Asistsys – Integrated System of Assistance for Patients with Severe Neuromotor Affections, RO-PNII, 2008-2011 • Pegaf – Grid-based experimental platform for developing applications based on workflows and with dynamic allocation of resources, RO-PNII, 2007-2010 • Sipadoc – Integrated System for the Digitization and Capitalization of the Document’s Cultural Patrimony, RO-PNII, 2007-2010 • SCIPA – Semantic Software Services for Collaboration and Inter-operability for Adaptive Business Processes, RO-PNII, 2008-2011 • NatComp – New Natural Computing Models in the Study of Complexity, RO-PNII, 2007-2010 Former projects: • Virtual VISP (STREP, FP6; IST-2004-027178), 2005 – 2009) • EGEE II – FP6, Enabling Grids for E-sciencE, FP6, may 2006 - april 2008 • SEEGRID - South Eastern European Grid – enabled eInfrastructure Development, FP6, research infrastructure, contract no. 031775, may 2006 - april 2008 • Collaboration between Ukraine and Romania on Distributed Systems (CobURDiS), Univ. Ternopil, Ukraine, 2006 – 2007 • GridMOSI: Virtual organization based on GRID technology for high performance modeling, simulation and, CEEX grant, 2005 - 2008