Autumn 2003

Rothschild Computer Science Institute Signs
$1.5 Million Agreement with Trento Institute
 

The University’s Caesarea Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Foundation Institute for Interdisciplinary Applications of Computer Science signed in mid-June an exchange agreement with the Institute for Research in Science and Technology, one of Italy ’s leading research facilities, based in Trento .  The agreement involves an investment of $1.5 million, of which the Italian institute will put up two thirds of the amount.

      The day prior to the signing, which brought Italy ’s ambassador to Israel to the Haifa campus, saw the start of the scientific session of the Italian-Israeli Forum on Computer Science.  The lectures dealt with research and application of artificial intelligence.

      Speaking about the exchange agreement, Prof. Martin Golumbic, who directs the Rothschild Institute, said: “The new initiative will begin by building upon existing areas of scientific relations already active among Israeli and Italian researchers, such as computational linguistics, neural networks, algorithmics, and artificial intelligence.”  He sees this exchange continuing with proposals for joint projects through the European Union.

            The former director of the Italian institute, Prof. Oliviero Stock, returned to visit the Rothschild Institute the first week of September and worked on the fulfillment of the agreement between the two institutes.  He also began a common project on I-Tourism.  Golumbic has worked with Stock in the past.  They had jointly organized bi-national workshops in Israel and in Italy on artificial intelligence in the early and mid-1990s.  The computer scientists are hopeful that the CRI-Trento agreement will be able to take advantage of the Scientific-Technological-Industrial Cooperation Treaty between Italy and Israel .