Informatics Europe Bulletin - May 2022

Dear Members,

In this edition of Bulletin, we are excited to announce our new webinars in support of gender equality in informatics. Congratulations also go to our Board Member Michael E. Caspersen for his new special EU-adviser appointment. Read on for more important IE updates and activity deadlines!

In this issue:

Introducing New Gender Equality in Informatics Webinar Series

Diversity within any group or society is a winning factor. It promotes the exchange of different viewpoints and ideas, leading to more effective results. Unfortunately, like many other scientific areas, women are underrepresented in informatics and we should make a change. From June onwards, we will launch a new live webinar series “Gender Equality in Informatics” in collaboration with COST Action EUGAIN.

On March 8th, EUGAIN participants from over 30 European countries presented the status of gender research in computer science in their own countries. The presentation videos are now online. The discussion of this topic will continue in our new webinar series, where distinguished computer scientists from our IE member institutes will present their experience and research on gender equality at our one-hour live webinars. Registrations for the first four webinars are now open:

• June 7th (Tue): Lessons on the Increasing Role of Diversity in Tech - the Story of Czechitas
  Speaker: Barbora Bühnová, Vice-Dean at Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University & Co-Founder of Czechitas (Czech Republic)
• July 11th (Mon): Current Actions and Opportunities Emphasising Gender Equality in IT
  Speaker: Lili Nemec Zlatolas, University of Maribor (Slovenia)
• September 12th (Mon): Good Practices throughout Academic Careers: from PhD to Professor
  Speaker: Steve Kremer, Inria (France)
• October 10th (Mon): Challenges on Academic Path as Female Informatics Scientists
  Speaker: Simona Motogna, Babes Bolyai University (Romania)

Also presented by EUGAIN participant, Prof. Laura Kovacs from TU Wien, is our next scientific webinar on May 30th about Automated Program Reasoning: register here. All webinars are free and open to all. We look forward to your participation!

Michael E. Caspersen Appointed as Special EU-Adviser on Digital Education

IE Board Member, Michael E. Caspersen, is recently appointed as special adviser on digital education and skills for Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager of the European Commission.

As special adviser, Michael E. Caspersen would provide support for the forthcoming Structured Dialogue on digital education and skills. Joining the IE Board since 2017, Michael E. Caspersen is the Chair of our Education Research Working Group and a member of the Steering Committee of the Informatics for All coalition, of which a task force he chaired has developed the Informatics Reference Framework for School presented to the European Commission in March.

Read the full story of Michael E. Caspersen’s special EU-Adviser appointment here.

Take Part in IE Awards: Submit Your Proposals by June 1st

ECSS 2022 will be held in Hamburg, Germany from October 24-26, with the main theme “Workforce for the Digital Transformation”. How do digital transformation and informatics influence each other? How can they be utilized to bring greater benefits to science, education and the society? We will look at this key topic not only from the scientific perspective but also social, economic and political perspectives.

As usual, our three-day summit will be packed with workshops and sessions on multiple subjects in addition to the summit main theme. The Awards Session is one of them, where the winning submissions of the Best Practices in Education Award (BPEA) and the Minerva Informatics Equality Award (MIEA) will be presented. Both Awards still accept submissions for this year until June 1:

• Do you have great plans on educating the workforce for the Digital Transformation? Submit your plan(s) to BPEA 2022 to stand a chance to win a EUR 5,000 prize sponsored by Microsoft.
• Do you have a success story to tell where you help develop the careers of female informatics faculty, including retention and promotion? Submit your application to MIEA 2022 to enter the competition of a EUR 5,000 prize sponsored by Google.

IE Working Groups Kicked Off; New Members Still Welcome

Our six new working groups have all been successfully launched. Thank you everyone who participated in the kick-off meetings and all who have indicated their interest to contribute to the working groups. The working group member lists are now published on IE website in their respective pages. Open to all IE members, all working groups still accept new members who wish to contribute. Please register here and we will contact you shortly. For working group members who have missed the kick-off meeting, meeting notes and materials are available upon request. Please contact our working group assistant at svetlana.tikhonenko@informatics-europe.org.

Final Call: Join IE’s Residential Academic Leadership Course by Award-winning Professors

Bill Gates once said, “as we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”

As leaders, do you know how to empower others? Are you sure you are doing the right leadership? Are you wondering if it’s still possible to maximize your leadership potential? Join our Residential Academic Leadership Course between 21 and 24 June 2022 at Carathotel Schloss Weikersdorf (formerly called “Hotel Schloss Weikersdorf”) in Baden bei Wien, Austria.
The three-day course will be facilitated by Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick and Prof. Austen Rainer, senior informatics/computing academics with strong leadership experience and evidence-based approaches towards better leadership. Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick was recently honoured with the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award 2022 for her significant impact on the Human-Computer Interaction research community. Join her and Prof. Austen Rainer to learn from their experience to leadership success: register for our Residential Course here by May 18th, 2022.

European-Funded Project - Ethics4EU: A Showcase of Open Educational Resources for Teaching Computer Ethics

As Ethics4EU project partner, we are happy to announce a virtual event on June 8th (11:00 – 13:00 CEST) hosted by the Ethics4EU project team. During the event, the project team will showcase a set of open access resources designed for teachers and lecturers to bring or enhance the teaching of computer ethics in their modules. The resources include practical tools such as presentations and assessment templates, and pedagogical guidelines on how to adjust the templates to their needs.

Our keynote speaker, Gonzalo Génova from Carlos III University of Madrid, will present a contribution on the topic "The Ethics of AI".

You can register for the event at this link here. More information on the agenda and the access link for the event will be provided upon registration.

***
Informatics Europe positively contributes to the success of European funded projects. Looking for a pan-European networking partner to strengthen and support your research or education projects? Reach out to us (administration@informatics-europe.org).

Association News

Board Meetings

• 20 May (Fri), 09:30-16:30, Zurich
• 24 June (Fri), 16:00-17:00, Zoom

Don’t forget: As a member representative, you can submit agenda topics and participate as an observer in board meetings. Let us know if you’d like to join us!

Executive Committee Meetings

• 19 May (Thu), 10:00-17:00, Zurich
• 8 July (Fri), 09:30-16:30, Rome

New Informatics Europe Members

We are very pleased to welcome the following new members:

• University of Gothenburg, as Federated Member with Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
• King’s College London, Department of Informatics, UK
• Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Computer Science School of Engineering, Spain

They joined a growing IE membership of over 160 institutions from 33 European countries. Check out our current member list.

Members News

Politecnico di Milano, Italy – NovHack: DEIB team wins the Euranova Hackathon

The team of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano, supervised by Prof. Emanuele Della Valle and made up of students Sergey Nabatov, Matteo Citterio, Andrea Cerasani and Nikita Rozov, won NovHack, the Euranova hackathon which took place from March 25th to 27th, 2022.

The challenge was to develop a solution to solve a big data use case that involved the use of the most popular data streaming technologies. Thanks to the partnership with AISIN, the students of the degree course in Computer Science & Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano had the opportunity to work with real-world data that challenged their data engineering and business intelligence skills.

The organizers congratulated the winning team for having demonstrated far superior technical skills compared to the other teams that participated in the competition, which was attended by over 80 students from all over the world.

***
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 22 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!