The General Assembly of the ERCIM AISBL, held in Athens in November 2013, unanimously elected Domenico Laforenza, Director of the Institute for Informatics and Telematics (IIT) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), as its new President. Domenico succeeds Keith Jeffery who served as the President of ERCIM for almost ten years.
A Conversation with Domenico Laforenza, New President of ERCIM AISBL
In a conversation with our Editor, Domenico Laforenza outlines his vision for the role to be played by ERCIM in a rapidly evolving global scenario. “Although many things are changing worldwide, and in particular in Europe” – Domenico says – “I am confident that ERCIM will remain at the forefront of developments into the future. Plans have been put in place for this to happen effectively and efficiently, and the right people - young dynamic, excellent researchers - are positioned to take over from the current senior generation. I believe that ERCIM has a great future: my efforts will be devoted to contributing to its preparation!”
The University Center for Informatics of the University of Geneva has just joined ERCIM as the Swiss member institution.
A European project can be a richly rewarding tool for pushing your research or innovation activities to the state-of-the-art and beyond. Through ERCIM, our member institutes have participated in more than 70 projects funded by the European Commission in the ICT domain, by carrying out joint research activities while the ERCIM Office successfully manages the complexity of the project administration, finances and outreach.
by Steven Pemberton
It is now more than 20 years since the World Wide Web started. In the early days of the web, the rallying cry was “If you have information it should be on the web!” There are -- possibly apocryphal -- tales of companies not understanding this, and refusing initially to put their information online. One mail-order company is reported to have refused to put their catalogue online, because “they didn't want just anybody getting hold of it”! Luckily that sort of attitude has now mostly disappeared, and people are eager to make their information available on the web, not least of all because it increases the potential readership, and is largely cheaper than other methods of promulgation.
