2. SEE CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE IN MATHEMATICS – INFORMATICS - ENGINEERING (MAIN-EN) Ivan Dimov Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Sofia ESOF Open Forum 2004 Stockholm, 26 August 2004

3. Outline  Who we are?  Centre of Excellence program of EU  SEE CoE in MAIN-EN group  Grids as a main infrastructure for scientific applications  Strategic Objectives and Functional Priorities of BAS for the period until 2007

4. BAS H EADQUARTERS

5. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE  The Academy is a national autonomous organization for basic and applied research performed by its 68 research institutes. It also has a membership of 129 Bulgarian and 85 foreign members.  Eligible to membership are senior research scientists and scholars, citizens of Bulgaria with outstanding contributions in their field of science.

6. GOALS AND TASKS  The Academy is dedicated to the furtherance of knowledge and its use for the general welfare.  The Academy acts as an expert body of the State in matters of scientific research and science in general.  Participates actively in major programs of national significance, the results of which are submitted to the Government, to state and industrial institutions.  Takes part in elaborating the country's scientific policy, its long term research programs and provides forecasts concerning the development of the country.  Engages in postgraduate and postdoctoral training, to an extent exceeding that of the Bulgarian Universities.

7. Projects with BG participation in FP5: Total number of financed projects: 154 BAS123

8. BG participation in NATO Scientific Programs Year # of grants 1993 10 1994 11 1995 17 1996 18 1997 20 1998 48 1999 30 2000 28 Total 182 124 out of these 182 have been granted to BAS

9. Aims of the activity CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE  To increase the capacity of participation of the high quality research centers in the Framework Program  To bring these centers closer to other excellent European research establishments by incorporating them into the network

10. 34 Centres of excellence where selected in 2000  These 34 centres were distributed in 9 of 10 new Member States and in Bulgaria and Romania  23 of CoE belong to the Academy of Sciences  9 of them are established in Universities  2 others in public research institutes

11. Achievements  Numerous links have been established between CoEs and other EU research institutions  Numerous scientific meetings have associated the researchers from these centres and their colleagues from EU  Scientists from EU have made numerous visits to teach and/or do research in the selected centres

12. Principle outcomes of the Community intervention  Good interaction of the countries in the framework program  Increasing the research capacity of centres  Active participation in the 6-th FP (in 2003 the selected centres participated in more then 440 proposals, which averages at more than 13 proposals per center)

13. A brief information about SEE centers of Excellence

14. EURROMAT Institute of Mathematics “Simion Stoilow” of the Romanian Academy Coordinator: Dr. Radu Purice Romania http://www.imar.ro http://www.imar.ro European Integration of the Romanian Mathematical Research Activity MISSOIN:  The organization at IMAR of a Centre for Advanced Studies in Mathematics (IMAR-CAS)  The organization of a number of Joint Research Groups gathering researchers from IMAR and from some leading European research centres

15. HERMES “HERMES” http://www.hermes.ucy.ac.cy Center of Excellence on Computational Finance & Economics University of Cyprus Prof. Stavros A. Zenios, Rector (& Hercules Vladimirou) School of Economics and Management University of Cyprus Mission:  Maintain international recognition as reputable research institute,  Further strengthen close collaborations with other European institutions,  Pursue research excellence of practical impact at scientific forefront in finance and economics. Award of honorary doctorate to Prof. Harrry Markowitz (Nobel leaureate, Economics, 1990)

16. Computer and Automation Institute (CAI) Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence for Automation and Computer Sciences (HUN-TING) Dr. Peter Inzelt - director, http://www.sztaki.hu/ Mission: Promote the high-tech I CT areas, to help implementing the Information Society:  Multimedia, picture processing,  Multi-agent Systems, Grammar Systems  Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, Virtual-,Extended Enterprise,  CNN-, GRID-, High-performance Symbolic computing  Diagnostics, Quality Control of Complex Systems  Machine Computer Vision  Biocybernetics, “ BIONICS”

17. MATHIAS Mathematics in Information Society Mission: Fundamental research in mathematics, and transfer the accumulated knowledge to applied science and technology mainly in high (postgraduate or postdoctoral) level. Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics

18. BULGARIAN INFORMATION SOCIETY CENTER OF EXCELLENCE - BIS 21 Prof. Ivan Dimov Institute for Parallel Processing Bulgarian Academy of Sciences http://www.bas.bg/clpp/index.htmlhttp://www.bas.bg/clpp/index.html; http://saturn.acad.bg/ http://saturn.acad.bg/ Mission: Develop the Centre towards an leading research in: Parallel algorithms Monte Carlo numerical analysis Information technologies for environmental protection Human language technologies Networks and GRIDs

19. BIS-21 Scientific developments Information Technologies for Emergency Situations Forecast Basic tool for: solving real-life problems in computer science, as well as problems of the modern society (ecological - see the picture on the right-hand side, where an information for the decision makers about the ozone pollution obtained using our computer cluster, is presented, mechanical and civil engineering, etc.); developing new tools for nuclear safety using recent results in mathematics (portraits of matrices).

20. What is GRID? Computational Grids are based on applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single task at the same time - usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of high- speed computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data. A computational grid is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides dependable, consistent pervasive, and inexpensive access to high-end computational capabilities (I. Foster, C. Kesselman, 1998). Grid computing requires the use of software that can divide and farm out pieces of a program to as many as several thousand high-speed computers.

21. GÉANT DEISA EGEE SEE-REN SEE-GRID Scientific applications SEE EU BIS-21 Change of Quality  IPP BAS is one of the initiators and a co-founder of the recently established Bulgarian GRID Consortium, facing the priorities of FP6.

22. New Grid activities: EGEE project 31 867 K€ for 2 years The Largest infrastructure project in Europe (includes more than 20 000 CPUs) SEE-GRID project 972 K€ – 1.5 years Includes SEE countries (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Turkey) + CERN. Main packages: nMigration of existing applications; nDeveloping new Grid applications

23. Problems and appeals  Excellence as major criterion for selection of new projects  New research capabilities for the FP7/new of EU and programmes of UNECSO, NATO, ESF, …  Further support to research infrastructure and human resources at EU level as well as at regional level  GEANT + GRIDs + (New applications)  Coordination of national and regional polices and programmes  Support to European Basic Research  European expertise in mathematics and computer science  Stimulating competition

24. Strategic Objectives and Functional Priorities of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for the Period until 2007 The mission of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is to contribute to the development of world science in accordance with the human values, national traditions and interests and to assist the accumulation of the spiritual and material values of the nation. This mission’s roots can be found in the first statutes of the Bulgarian Learned Society and are embedded in the today’s law and statutes of BAS. In conformity with this mission the main strategic objective of BAS is as follows: To ensure and maintain the highest possible level of science, interdisciplinarity, international competitiveness and high national self-confidence in agreement with the needs of the socio-economic and spiritual development of the Bulgarian society and with the European and world trends in the organization of scientific research.

25.  Improve the funding of science in Bulgaria both in terms of GDP and national budget share and the efficiency of funding;  To support the development of the Bulgarian society;  To strengthen the national identity, historical and cultural values originated by Bulgarian people on its land;  To integrate intensively with the European programmes and structures;  To develop opportunities for scientific communication;  To update and modernize the obsolete material basis and equipment;  To maintain the high level of qualification of Bulgarian scientists;  To decrease the brain-drain without affecting the mobility of scientists.

26. Thank you for your attention