Informatics Europe Bulletin: Strengthening the Bridge between Academia and Industry

Informatics Europe

Informatics Europe Bulletin - April 2023

Dear Colleague,

As we enter the second quarter of the year, IE continues to work on projects and activities to strengthen the European informatics education and research community. Explore our brand-new Open Activities webpage and collaborate with research colleagues across Europe! Also not to miss is the launch of our IE CV Repository service and Best Dissertation Award, both supporting informatics early career professionals and connecting them to industry and a wider audience.

In this issue:

Kicking off IE CV Repository – Connecting Companies and Informatics Early Career Professionals

The CV Repository is IE’s brand-new career service, committed to connect early career professionals from our member institutions and employers in informatics and related disciplines across Europe. Sponsored by our industry member Bending Spoons, the platform is now open for applicants to register.

Students and recent graduates of our member institutes can enjoy the CV Repository service exclusively for free. This includes Bachelor’s students of the last year of study, Master’s and PhD students, as well as recent graduates. If you are one of them, take five minutes to easily create your profile, upload your CV, and take your chance to win one of the four 100EUR cash prizes, which we will randomly-drawn among the first 100 fully uploaded profiles (two winners) as well as among all those uploaded by May 31st (another two winners). Many have already taken action during the first week since the service launch: register now!

The information provided by applicants will be accessible to the Repository’s registered employers as of June 1st. Both Informatics Europe members and sponsors will be able to filter through the dataset when looking for potential employees with a given skillset. Recruiters’ contributions will come to support strategic initiatives for the informatics community in Europe.

As any other IE activity, the CV Repository service will reach as far as we all want to bring it! Support it by registering as a recruiter or applicant where relevant, and by disseminating it within the community at large.

Nominate Now for IE’s Brand-New Best Dissertation Award

We are proud to introduce our new Best Dissertation Award, which recognises excellent PhD dissertations in informatics and supports young informatics researchers to disseminate their research to a broader audience. The Award, sponsored by Springer, consists of a certificate, a prize of EUR 3,000, and the invitation to the winner to publish the awarded thesis as well as to attend the European Computer Science Summit (ECSS) and present the work during its official award ceremony, on October 24, 2023. Noteworthy runners-up may also be recognised and invited to join the ceremony.

Each Informatics Europe member institution is invited to select an outstanding PhD dissertation, defended in the 2022 calendar year, and submit the nomination following our instructions here. The Award Committee will select the winner based on the following criteria:

  • the originality of the research and the methods used,
  • the quality of the achieve results,
  • the societal impact of the thesis,
  • the quality of the exposition.

Should more than one dissertation reach an equivalent top score, the one with the highest societal impact score will be selected.

Nominate your best candidate by 15 June 2023. We anticipate your submissions!

New Members Online Welcome Session

As IE continues to grow and welcome more members, we recently invited the most recent ones to our first online welcome session. Moderated by IE Board members and staff representatives, the number of session participants would be kept sufficiently small to allow for some discussion.

According to the feedback received in the first session, participants came away with a clearer understanding of what membership can bring to their institutions, for example, concrete opportunities to learn and collaborate, an understanding of services like the department evaluation, or ways to foster their visibility and pan-European networking. Participants also gained a stronger motivation to further involve their institution in the community, thus in promoting ideas and policies on research and education in informatics in Europe, and contributing to a stronger common voice of our discipline. The final takeaway from the session "We are all Informatics Europe" is still resonating, thus we look forward to the new Board of Directors' and Working Groups' applications!

In view of the rewarding experience from this first online welcome session  for both IE (our new "Open Activities" webpage resulted from it) and our members, the next welcome session is already planned for Thursday May 11th. It will include both new members and new IE Representatives, to ensure also our more senior member institutions remain up to date. Additional online sessions will follow, to complement the in-presence one scheduled on October 23rd in Edinburg, just before ECSS 2023 starts. It is through connection, collaboration and networking that the community will continue to thrive and grow!

For more information or if you would like to participate in such a session, please contact karin.triviere@informatics-europe.org.

Residential Academic Leadership Course: Early Bird Offer Ends Soon

Following the success of the inaugural course last year, the Residential Academic Leadership Course will be held again this June at Krainerhütte, Conference & Event Hotel in Baden bei Wien, Austria.

The course is highly recommended for computer scientists with significant and formal leadership roles, or those who intend to take on such roles in the near future. The 4-day-3-night course offers the opportunity to step away from your day-to-day environment, focus on your leadership and reflect with others, with both structured and informal activities, in a restful environment. The course will be facilitated by Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick and Prof. Austen Rainer, two senior informatics/computing academics with strong leadership backgrounds. Academic leaders from over 45 institutions across and beyond Europe have already benefited from their evidence-based leadership training through our courses.

Apply now – the course registration fee covers 3-night hotel accommodation and 10 meals at the hotel restaurant. Register until 28 April 2023 to enjoy early bird offer - read more here. See you at our course!

IE Meeting Industry in Romania

On March 11th, our Executive Director Nuria Anguera was present at our member institute Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Romania to exchange best practices on how to foster and mutually benefit from academic-industrial collaborations. Joining her was Gregor McElvogue, Business Development Manager from School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

Recognizing Industry as a key stakeholder of the Informatics Research and Education community, Nuria urged companies operating in informatics and related disciplines to support Informatics Europe mission, and to incentivize their researchers to join our activities. Gregor shared how the University of Edinburgh fosters entrepreneurship and sustainable relations with industry, a topic which will be further expanded at the Wednesday session of ECSS 2023.

The exchange took place at an event organized by the iTransfer Technology Transfer Center, led by our Board Member Lenuta Alboaie. The event was well attended by the industrial partners of the Faculty of Computer Science, the Faculty members and those of related disciplines, as well as other invited university representatives.

IE is grateful to be part of this event, and is particularly proud that it came up while organizing the two industry-related sessions of our annual European Computer Sciences Summit (ECSS) this year between 23-25 October in Edinburgh, UK. More details will be announced soon on our ECSS webpage and next Bulletin.

We look forward to fostering more informatics education and research collaborations between European academia and industry!

EUGAIN Summer Training School ‘23 for PhD students & Young Researchers

Following last year’s success, COST Action “European Network for Gender Balance in Informatics” (EUGAIN) will host the EUGAIN Summer Training School for the second time this June in Rome, Italy. The theme of this year is “research recharge”, where participants will focus on research methodology and soft skills essential to support and foster gender studies in informatics. The Training School will be joined by distinguished speakers in computer science and experts in the area of gender balance in informatics, including Prof. Geraldine Fitzpatrick and Prof. Austen Rainer, IE’s Academic Leadership Development Course facilitators.

The Summer Training School is open to PhD students and young researchers. Registration is free and includes participation in all lectures, social events, meals and coffee breaks. Grants to support travel and accommodation are also available. Application opens until 21 April 2023. Read here for full information.

Association News

Board Meetings

  • 28 April (Fri), 16:00-17:00, Zoom
  • 26 May (Fri), 09:30-16:30, Zurich

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

  • 25 May (Thu), 09:00-16:30, Zurich

New Informatics Europe Members 

We are very pleased to welcome our latest industry member IBM Research - Europe as well as our 170th member! They joined a growing IE membership of informatics institutions, national associations, companies and research centers from over 30 countries. Check out our current members list.

Don’t Miss These IE Activities

All webinars are free and open to all. Register and review previous webinar materials here.

Members News

Bending Spoons – First Ascent: Celebrating Europe’s Most Impressive Women Students in Computer Science & Engineering

Call for applications! Bending Spoons, one of Europe’s leading tech companies, is organizing an all-expenses-paid, 4-day retreat for 20 outstanding women students who share a passion for programming. The event is called First Ascent International: Women in Tech. It will take place in Milan on 5-8 October 2023. Find out more and apply here.

German Informatics Society – TrainDL WebTalk “Policy Experimentation – Innovation in and for Digital Education”

Digitization is changing our societies and individual lives before our very eyes. Educational systems in Europe adapt in various ways and political decision-makers often need to rely on goodwill when adopting new measures for digital education. This leaves schools, educators and learners with varying degrees of competences. The upcoming TrainDL WebTalk will explore if and how “policy experimentation” can be an effective approach for better, evidence-based educational policies in the digital age. Guest speakers at the WebTalk include:

  • Kathrin Herres, referent for Erasmus+ Policy Support at the DAAD,
  • Johannes Müller, expert for evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation, founder of CorrelAid and co-founder of &effect,
  • Petra Bevek, Undersecretary at the Slovenian Ministry of Education, partner in the Erasmus+ projects AIRT and VALIANT, and
  • Prof. Dr. Ulrike Lucke, expert in the TrainDL Policy Evaluation Cluster from University of Potsdam.
Funded by the European Union in the Erasmus+ program and led by the German Informatics Society, TrainDL is a European education policy project with partners in Germany, Lithuania and Austria. Register here for the WebTalk taking place on April 19, at 17:00 CEST.

Hasso Plattner Institute – Call for applications: Three Scholarships for International Computer Science Students

The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) awards three scholarships to particularly motivated and talented international students to pursue the Master’s degree in Software Systems Engineering (English language). Don’t miss the upcoming online activities to learn more: The scholarship is for the amount of EUR 1,100 per month for up to 24 months. Apply until April 30. Visit here for the full program information.

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New Jobs @ Informatics Europe Job Platform

There are 14 new job ads 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!

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