Main Theme Sessions

The main theme of the ECSS 2023 was "Informatics: Shaping the Future". The main theme session was chaired by Jane Hillston, University of Edinburgh, and Gregor Engels, SICP - Software Innovation Campus Paderborn.

Over the last sixty years and more, Informatics has made incredible advances and as a result has had profound impact on the way that we all live our lives. It is hard to think of an aspect of society that has not been touched by digital technologies and it is impossible to imagine getting through the pandemic without it. And as we look forward neither the impact nor the pace of change is likely to decrease, which places great responsibility on us as leaders and researchers in Informatics. In this session, we learnt about some current hot topics, which looked likely to have profound and wide-reaching impacts, ranging from quantum computing to large language models. The speakers also took part in a panel discussion considering the question “How do we ensure that Informatics shapes the future that we hope for?”.

Session Rundown

09:00 - 09:30 "Finding the Quantum Advantage" by Elham Kashefi, The National Quantum Computing Centre (UK) [Slides]

09:30 - 10:00 "Large Language Models" by Mirella Lapata, University of Edinburgh (UK) [Slides]

10:00 - 10:30 "Big data in life sciences, from theory to applications" by Stefano Ceri, Politecnico di Milano (Italy) [Slides]

10:30 - 11:00 "Beyond common Computing – Does Sustainability require new (and old) Alternatives to “classical” Digital Computing Machines?" by Jochen Viehoff, Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (Germany) [Slides]

11:00 - 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 -12:30 Panel Discussion: "How do we ensure that informatics shapes the future that we hope for?"

Panel chair: Ewa Luger, University of Edinburgh (UK)