For many reasons, this is an interesting event.

• Firstly, with the cloud being a part of everyday computing infrastructure, one would have thought that high performance computer clusters (at a single location) are somewhat outdated (or only for niche markets). But given the fact that in many scientific disciplines computing power for simulating processes, analysing data, etc. are necessary, there is an increasing need of HPC power. Dieter Kranzlmüller reported that they could “sell” three times the computing power of the Leibnitz computer centre infrastructure in Munich.
• Secondly, three universities unite in order to make this happen: Linz and Innsbruck as key driver with Salzburg as associated player. It is not typical that universities unite!
• Thirdly, in a keynote by Eng Lim Goh (Senior VP Engineering, CTO – SGI), I learned that the Altix UV 1 sells well to scientists as it basically behaves like a “normal” Unix system. Just with really a lot of memory and high performance. Why is this important? The reason is that many researchers – obviously – are experts in their respective fields but not necessarily in computer science and/or in formulating their research models in a parallel way, i.e., a way that is suitable for HPC architectures
• Fourthly, Eng Lim Goh reported that the increased density of integrated circuits makes high performance computers very heavy. So heavy in fact that standard buildings will in the near future not be able to accommodate HPCs!
• Fifthly, if you plan your next HPC investment, you should think about a partner that would be able to collect the enormous heat that is generated by the processors.

The official press release for Mach is available here.

More photos are available at http://icwe2010.webengineering.org/Conference/photos.aspx.

After a short introduction, we mainly discussed the following two questions: (1) if you would have a chance to study “Web Engineering” today, where would you do that? (2) If you were in a position to hire Web Engineers, where would you require your students from and what profile would you expect?

My personal message I take home from this panel: perhaps we are trying to much too educate “miracle-students”. From my experience at Salzburg Research I know that Web Engineering, i.e., the systematic development of Web applications, is a truly interdisciplinary task. But it is not the people/researchers as single individuals that are of interdisciplinary nature, it is the teams that are interdisciplinary: so I guess we must not aim at establishing curricula that teach everything from Web technologies, via Web science, design, information architecture, etc. That will be too much for one (single) curriculum and also, it will be unfocused and there students would have a hard time to get a job. What we need is a set of complimentary curricula, e.g., technical engineers, information architects, etc.

This special issue has two types of contributions
• on the one hand, we have socio-economic papers that explain the cultural and societal backgrounds and provide facts and figures;
• on the other hand, we have technical contributions which are showcases of knowledge-based systems that explain the state-of-the-art of advanced IS systems.

See http://hmd.dpunkt.de/270/ for further details.

1. One was in “Financial Times Deutschland” (FTD) on “Research in Austria” (Oct. 21, 2008 – also available as http://www.ftd.de/forschung_bildung/forschung/:Forschung-in-%D6sterreich-Jeder-freie-Cent-flie%DFt-in-die-Labore/435388.html?nv=cd-rss900).
2. The other one was in “research eu” (No. 56, June 2008) on the “Finnish model tops the ranking”.

The first article argues that Austria has substantially intensified its research activities and has come from an innovation follower to the position of an innovation leader. The research quote was increased form 1,7 % (in 1997) to 2,63 % in 2008. The increase has been achieved by more spending from the public as well as from industry (fostered by tax incentives and programmes).

The second article argues in a similar fashion about Finland (albeit with a longer historical perspective).

The interesting thing to me is, that in a short period – we are only talking about 10+ years in both cases – a country can be reshaped concerning its FTI-policy. I think this is amazing, I would not have thought that this is possible in such short timeframes (even one might argue that for a sustainable impact including a change of culture this will take at least 25 years …).

• TRL Chart http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/trl/trlchrt.pdf
• TRL White Paper http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/trl/trl.pdf
• RND Degree of Difficulty White Paper http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/trl/r&d3.pdf

BTW: I came across arnetminer while looking at www.yasni.de, a site that I was pointed to by my colleague Sandra Schaffert. It also includes my Amazon wish list which is less desirable …

And: both, artminer.org and yasni.de are technically highly professional Web 2.0 sites with an almost desktop application like appearance.

The founding members include the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology (STMWIVT), EADS, Liebherr-Aerospace, and MTU Aero Engines.

• RL Chart
  http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/trl/trlchrt.pdf

• TRL White Paper
  http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/trl/trl.pdf

• RND Degree of Difficulty White Paper
  http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/trl/r&d3.pdf

A visit to the No. 1 technical university of Romania: UPT, the “Politehnica”, i.e., technical university of Timisoara (in Western Romania). Some 14000 students (with some 30%+ female students!!!), excellent staff and apparently 35% external funding (I have been told by Rector Prof. Robu). Very impressive figures, indeed.