| Informatics Europe | |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2006 |
| Type | Learned Society |
| Headquarters | Zurich, Switzerland |
| Membership | 62 institutions (22 countries) |
| President | Bertrand Meyer |
| Website | http://www.informatics-europe.org |
Informatics Europe is an association of informatics departments in Europe founded in 2006.[1][2] Its members (institutions rather than individuals) are PhD-granting departments of informatics, computer science, computing etc. in universities as well as public and industrial research centers in information and software technology etc. in Europe. As of September 2011, Informatics Europe had 62 members from 22 different European countries [3] including e.g. Google, Intel, and Microsoft Research as industrial members.
Informatics Europe is similar to the Computing Research Association (CRA) in North America, but unlike the CRA, it does not include informatics departments that are granting bachelor or master degrees only. Informatics Europe is also related to scientific organizations like the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) and the ACM Europe Council of the Association for Computing Machinery.
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The charter of Informatics Europe is to "foster the development of quality research and teaching" in informatics, which the association defines as "information and computing sciences".[4]
Informatics is a very international academic discipline of research and high-level education. An association like Informatics Europe represents the interests of its member academic departments and research laboratories in the discipline at the European scientific and policy level, to foster the science of the field, its practice and professions. Activities include:
Through annual European Computer Science Summits (ECSS), the association brings relevant themes and trends in Informatics to the foreground, from a scientific, educational, strategic, professional or policy viewpoint. The Summits held since 2005 include:
The initiative to establish Informatics Europe was taken in 2005 during the first ECSS, organized by Bertrand Meyer (ETH Zurich) and Willy Zwaenepoel (EPFL Lausanne) as part of the `150 years ETH' activities; see [1] for a report in Communications of the ACM. Informatics Europe was officially created in 2006 at the second ECSS, chaired by Christine Choppy (Universite Paris XIII) and Jan van Leeuwen (Utrecht University).