Blog of Random Thoughts and Pictures

New assignment in scientific and technological cooperation across Europe

July 22nd, 2010

I’ve recently returned from beautiful Tallinn where the weather was hot and the city was beautiful. I was in Estonia for two items one was the COST-ICT Annual Progress Conference and the other was the COST-ICT domain committee meeting.

Before getting into the conference and meetings a little info on COST. Set up to run as an intergovernmental framework for European cooperation in science and technology, it allows for the coordination of nationally-funded research on a European level. COST does not fund research itself but provides a platform for European scientists to cooperate on a particular project and exchange expertise. These projects are called “Actions”.
A slide set overview of COST can be seen at this link [pdf].
My most recent experience of a COST action has been throught the ICT Action IC0703 TMA. The purpose of TMA is to host a community of researchers around the area of data traffic monitoring and analysis particularly looking at the theory, techniques, tools and applications for future networks. I have seen this community in full effect when collecting and identifying network traffic trace collections. Also Alan Davy has benefited from participating in a short-term scientific mission (STSM) in October 2009.
Anyway back to the Annual Progress Conference and from it I learned about a much broader community of projects such as

It was great to see Irish involvement in these Actions with a particular stand out being IC0804 well I would say this as John McLaughlin (TSSG) is participating in this energy efficiency action.
Now to the second part of this meeting, the COST-ICT domain committee meeting. I’ve played many sports in my time, and I always held out the hope that one day I would get to represent my country, I should have know better. But in the area of ICT well I’ve finally managed it.

I was recently nominated to represent Ireland on the COST ICT domain committee, and during the Estonian meeting that nomination was ratified. It’s a four year term and during that time I’ll get to interact more closely with a very vibrant and forward looking community. There will be responsibilities towards reviewing ongoing actions, new actions and also advising existing actions on their potential progress. This assignment (voluntary) will be a nice complement to my existing role in the TSSG.
I am looking forward to this journey and it couldn’t have started in a nicer place than Tallinn, Estonia.