by Keith Jeffery, ERCIM President
ERCIM is celebrating twenty years of cooperation for excellence in research. Over the last twenty years, ERCIM has developed from the initial three-member consortium to an open and inclusive - but managed - European organization of currently twenty members.
"It gives me great pleasure and satisfaction to observe that ERCIM succeeds so well in realising the objectives of its founders: creating coherence in Europe in research in mathematics and information science through personal acquaintance and co-operation of researchers from different nations, and at the same time, using these contacts to stimulate excellence in research and innovation in the participating national organisations.
More than ever this co-operative excellence in the key areas covered by ERCIM is necessary to help counter and redress the problems of our society. I firmly believe that the joint research activities of ERCIM will prove to be essential."
Cor Baayen, First ERCIM President (1989 - 1994)
and ERCIM Président d'honneur
Twenty years of ERCIM stands also for twenty years of ERCIM News. ERCIM News was one of the first activities of ERCIM and with its 77 issues it has born witness to the advances in European R&D and Innovation in Information Technology and Applied Mathematics during the last twenty years.
by Costantino Thanos
ERCIM has played a pioneering role in establishing the Digital Library (DL) field as a distinct area of research in Europe. Instrumental have been, first, the activities of the ERCIM Working Group on Digital Libraries, set up in 1995, and later those of the DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries.
by Alessandro Fantechi
Following an initial successful workshop bringing together ERCIM members interested in formal verification, held in Pisa in December 1992, Stefania Gnesi and Diego Latella, CNR, Pisa, proposed the creation of an ERCIM Working Group dedicated to Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems (FMICS). Although at that time, model checking was in its early days, the early ERCIM FMICS community was already aware of the great potential of formal verification techniques.
Constantine Stephanidis, Director of FORTH-ICS and Member of the ERCIM Executive Committe from 1998 - 2004 and member of ERCIM's Board of Directors since 2005; Chair of the ERCIM Working Group 'User Interfaces for All' (1995-2006) and Coordinator of the Coordination Action 'InterLink': by Stephanie Parker
EchoGRID (European & Chinese Cooperation on Grids), has focused on boosting interactions between researchers in Europe and China by creating gateways, defining common approaches, developing shared visions, and testing interoperability for standards development through a series of PlugTests.
by Ashok Kar, Sudhanshu Rai and Florence Pesce
The Euro-India ICT Cooperation Initiative (EuroIndia) has been holding a series of events to foster cooperation between Europe and India in various ICT domains targeted under the 7th Framework Programme. ERCIM is a partner in this project.
