Chairperson's Address, October 2024

Dear Colleagues and Members,

A few weeks ago, we were having the Autumn Festival in Londonhosted by a previous da Vinci winner: Professor Oliver Buxton (find a recent interview here). The da Vinci award makes the Autumn Festival special and one of my favorite ERCOFTAC events. As always, the quality of the finalists is impressive, but this time was the tightest competition I have seen with two winners from the same university! After the scientific and social fun part, we were working hard for you in our committee meetings. Below, a few outcomes of these discussions.

In the Knowledge Network Committee (KNC), we established a second editor for the ERCOFTAC Knowledge Base wiki: Prof. Suad Jakirlic. Besides soliciting and handling submissions to the wiki, Suad will develop a new area designed for machine learning applications. So don’t be surprised if he reaches out to you! A strategic marketing review was presented by our chairman-elect Dr. David Standingford. He has been collecting input from our community on where ERCOFTAC is or could be creating value for you. As one result, we will now post job openings of our members on our website and will advertise them through our communication channels. Moreover, we decided to have a trial award for the next Spring Festival. Professors Koen Hillewaert, Andrea Sciacchitano and Tomas Bodnar will follow up on this. So stay tuned!

In the Scientific Programme Committee (SPC), we were hearing about and deciding on support for many activities of our Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and Pilot Centers (PCs). While we have progressed in diversity of our leadership team, in particular for the SPC, we are repeatedly reminded when we fall short. For example, this year, there was not a female finalist in both the da Vinci and Osborne Reynolds awards, something we have been called out before. When quality is the paramount selection criterion, obtaining diversity (of gender, geography or any other kind) is not an easy achievement, but more could and should be done. To develop ideas further, we decided to form a diversity and equality working group including Prof. Maria Vittoria Salvetti, Dr. David Standingford and Prof. Marcello Meldi. Looking forward to what the team will come up with!

Finally, we locked down some date and places of key events: Our flagship conference ETMM15 will take place in Croatia on September 22-24, 2025, our Spring Festival will be in Stockholm, Sweden in May 2025 and the next Autumn Festival in Darmstadt, Germany in October 2025. I hope to meet you at one of these events. In the meantime, I wish you a relaxing holiday season and a great start in the new year!

Prof. Dominic von Terzi,
Chairperson of ERCOFTAC