Seventh six-monthly periodic report

Project start date and duration: 1. March, 2001 for 3 years +10 months

EU funding: 600 000 Euros

Project title: Technology and Science for the Information Society, Institute SZTAKI as a Centre of Excellence

Acronym: HUN-TING

Keywords: Computer Science & Control, Information & Communication Technology, Intelligent Automation

Name of the Co-ordinator: Dr. Géza Haidegger

Activity progress report

MTA SZTAKI was fulfilling its scientific tasks, basically, as much as possible, according to the submitted plans and to the accepted contract version. We invited, selected and hosted foreign research experts to work with our colleagues on various themes related to our activities. We had the chance to visit other institutions and deepen our co-operation with international scientific partners. We have been very active in international co-operation, and thanks to the prestigious title of Centre of Excellence, we had achieved nice results in research and in forming joint activities, preparing joint 6th Framework proposals, etc.

In this reporting period, ( period #7,) we had 3 professors/scientists, one in overlap/continuation with period #6 to work with us,

Prof. Geroge Paun, Dr. Radu Gramatovici and Renaud Peteri

as “returning fellows”, and as a new ERCIM related Ph.D. fellow, we are hosting Alexander Anufriev from mid July.

We have planned, organised, prepared and conducted several workshops and conferences. They were successful both for us, organisers, and also for all participants. The national and international appreciation of our Institute has been raised by these actions. We are proud to have organised them.

We participated at the EU-FP6-related information events in Budapest, mostly as delivering the presentations on the new features for the promotion of the 6^th Framework program. Priority 2 and Priority 3 are our main focus, but as it will be demonstrated, also Life sciences, and energy, etc, will be involved in our joint, widening scope.

During the 7^th period, one of our greatest actions was the organization of the IEEE Conference series, :

CNNA, 2004 – 22-24 July, 2004,

IEEE Joint Conference on Neural Networks, and

IEEE Int. Conference on Fuzzy Systems.

(CNNA was a HISTORIC event, because FIRST TIME in science, was the come-together of the world’s experts in retina-prostheses. This will show, how the “CROSSROAD OF PRIO1 and PRIO2, i.e. the crossroads of ITC and Life Sciences will DELIVER so many good items for man-kind!!!)

But we are proud also to have hosted the 37^th CIRP International Seminar, together with the IWES 04, the 5^th International Workshop on Emergent Synthesis. (May 19-21 and May 24-25). The importance of these meeting are well-known to many: topics focus on the future of Europe’s and the world’s manufacturing ability, how to produce wealth for mankind without ruining others and the nature?!.

Conference on WP 5 was a great step ahead, too, as detailed later on.

All details are available on the web, and in the appendices.

www.sztaki.hu/conferences www.lpds.sztaki.hu www.sztaki.hu

According to the plans, our Laboratories utilised the previously purchased durable equipment (hardware and software) in order to meet the requirements of research co-operation envisaged.

Just to list some key areas briefly for the 2003-2004 year statistics, while we know, that these numbers are all to increase during the last part of 2004 too:

7 significant science books were published by authors from our Institute, on Cellular Neural Networks, Visual Computing, Process Modelling and Model Analysis, Intelligent Control Systems, On Non-linear Systems with Varying Structures.

12 books have been edited by SZTAKI researchers, and the long list of publications is given in the attachment.

Out of this number, 57 papers were published in international journals, 69 in international co-operation. Almost 120 oral conference presentations were held. 7 new Ph.D. degrees were granted and 2 titles of Doctor of Academy were granted. 53 scientists had taken part in lecturing at university courses.

Almost 30 projects had been contracted and being worked on within the 5^th Framework Programme of the EU. List of EU 5^th Framework projects are listed below.

By the midterm of the 6^th Framework Programme, our Institute can draw a statistics on the start. We had submitted around 55 proposals till October 2004, (and about 6 proposals were submitted during the time of the present reporting ) and the plans are also very impressive, to keep up with this rate. Regarding the success rate of the 6^th Framework proposals, we are falling behind the previous figures, but still, can be proud to have contracted several ones rather soon. (at the very start of the HUN-TING project, CITRO and BEATRICE could be submitted and was successful). A full list of submitted and accepted proposals is available, but is not shown in public domain documents.

Our Institute, due to its devoted scientific area of Automation and Computer Sciences, has a special role and value: MTA SZTAKI is the Hungarian key institute in the ERCIM Society. (European Research Consortium for Information and Mathematics) (www.ercim.org). This membership in the consortium offers MTA SZTAKI the opportunity to find the best scientific partners in Europe, and through an active participation in the actions of ERCIM, MTA SZTAKI can better disseminate its scientific results, while opens the doors also to attract young scientists from abroad. This channel had proven to be very valuable to recruit the professors, scientists and Ph.D. fellows who promoted the lot of joint work and proposals we could develop.

The participation of the key researchers and of the directors of MTA SZTAKI within the Directors’ Meeting and the Executive Committee meetings plus at the Working Group meetings is very essential. Several of the CoE scientific progress results are related to the ERCIM actions. The director and the deputy director of MTA SZTAKI regularly take part in the ERCIM top-level meetings, and several key researchers are working in special ERCIM scientific working groups. Our ERCIM membership is providing a stable channel for scientific relations, for visiting European key institutions, and for inviting experts. In this segment, director P.Inzelt and Dr. Csuhaj E, attended the meetings in Crete, Heraklion to meet the ERCIM directors’ meeting in May 26-30 and 22-29.

The travels and visits from MTA SZTAKI to other European research entities are financed mostly from separate sources, and just a few are managed through the CoE programme. As it can be seen from the yearly reports, around 300 travels are managed yearly for the scientific cooperation among the European partners and our Institute.

During the past periods, we had the following visits to European partners, based on the CoE:

The 4^th Yearly meeting of the Centres of Excellences.

In the beginning of June, the EUREKA meeting was held in Oslo. A harmonization is underway to integrate the EUREKA nad EU PRIO3 (NaMatProd) efforts in Europe, to have better proposlas with higher impact on industry.- including SMEs. We have subitted the IPMMAN proposal under this working groiup, but it was not selected for funding, (Thresholds were met positively.)

The Europe-wide work on MANUFUTURE is also based partially on the EUREAK Factory group.

We maintain our close cooperation through the OSACA Network of “Open systems in Controls”, with Stuttgart University, Germany. Though we had no direct exchange of scientists in this reporting time, we had met face-to-face at other international events, and kept on preparing a joint proposal on Open and real-time control systems. The proposal with acronym REACT was submitted last week.

Virtual laboratories are to be very essential for the future, and MTA SZTAKI is working on extending its present ties. The most developed Virtual Laboratory had been developed by the (WP6-7) Manufacturing Automation entities of MTA SZTAKI, built around the former cooperation with the Stuttgart Fraunhofer Institute (FhG IPA).

A continuous cooperation is maintained within this channel.

Further virtual Laboratory developments are underway with: several universities in France, UK, Germany, Austria, Rumania and Italy. We also initiated a closer cooperation framework with other Centres of Excellences, and by the end of the project, we will be pleased to report on many plans reached as success.