Prof. Galia Angelova Institute for Parallel Processing Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

1. Prof. Galia AngelovaInstitute for Parallel ProcessingBulgarian Academy of Sciences BIS-21 Centre of Excellence in Information Technologies ICA1-2000-70016

2. BIS-21 competence • Large computations and parallel algorithms, Environmental mathematics, Human language technologies (HLT), Networking … • 12 FP5 projects plus NATO, VW, … and many failures • Reviews for the EC, NATO • IST NCP and membership in the IST Committee

3. Coordination of a FP5 IST project • (a TN) Balric-Ling, for raising the awareness regarding language technologies at Balkans (RO, BG, GR, UK) • I submitted this proposal because we lack critical mass of skilled researchers in HLTs, i.e. the majority of us are not capable to integrate in the European scientific community. Spreading out excellency is part of the CoE homework • Unfortunately, we cannot produce the critical mass quickly. Informing people about the reality does not make them top actors there (it’s a learning process)

4. What (else) can be done, given that … (1) On the one hand, • the EC does much, if not everything possible to help us (thanks!) • Europe should not lose excellency and competitiveness while coping with the enlargement • It is a bad idea to require “obligatory involve-ment of ACC partners” etc., as coordinators are free to have their visions. I.e. no pressing, no forcing, not (too many) dedicated calls in the strategic areas

5. What (else) can be done, given that … (2) On the other hand, ACC problems are still open, like • Low standard (due to long transition) and low RTD support at national level for some ACC, brain drain • We lack top expertise in many areas • We are unknown and/or less attractive • “We are the others”, e.g. for the average IST reviewer “exploitation plan” still means mostly “EU-based exploitation”. Similarly with “European dimension” • We want to integrate more quickly, for many reasons, incl. hope to preserve & strengthen our RTD potential

6. BIS-21 proposes to the EC to try addressing thematic areas where ACC have unique excellency which is important for Europe (but still unknown to it and … to us)

7. Our proposal is to implement aspects of ‘Action Plan 2’ • We propose a simple, initial steps in the direction of “finding ACC specific excellency” • National experts and NCPs collect such topics for each ACC country and exchange them • These thematic priorities are “unified” at a conference (why not in Sofia) • The EC gets the list and may react accordingly in the thematic and/or horisontal programmes

8. Motivation • Up to now, we try to fit the FP5 and FP6 thematic areas. In this way Europe could omit something important • This is mostly activity of the ACC NC persons and experts • This is an additional step to tackle the fragmentation of the European research • This is an attempt for stimulating the specific, unique research topics in ACC (it seems the stimulation has to be done via traditional instruments for the moment)

9. Motivation • The result will be useful anyway. In the worst case it will show how the ACC countries evaluate their own scientific excellency EC could help much in this process, by its extensive experience in the organisation of such enterprises