CEA-LETI / MINATEC
CEA-LETI, the Laboratory for Electronics and Information Technology is operated by "Direction de la Recherche Technologique" at CEA, the French Atomic Energy Commission. It mainly aims at helping companies to increase their competitiveness through technological innovation and transfer of its technical know-how to industry. Major player in the MINATEC Micro-Nano technologies innovation center, CEA-LETI benefits from 8000 m2 state-of-the-art clean rooms, with equipments worth some 160 million euros. It is currently employing some 1600 people among whom 1100 CEA employees and co-workers of various status including 100 people from industrial partners, working in the CEA-LETI premises within the framework of bilateral collaborations. Overall, research contracts with industry are worth 75% of CEA-LETI annual income. It has a very important patents portfolio, and filed last year more than 200 patents and 700 publications. The laboratory is structured into six departments, with a specific department operating 24-7 the technological facilities of the silicon technology platform, and five program-oriented departments covering the fields of microelectronics, microsystems, optronics, sytem design and telco, and technologies for bio and health.
CEA-LETI has more than 80 projects in progress and participates as coordinator in several areas: new energy technologies, telecom, photonics, nanoelectronics, beyond CMOS. The Digital Communications Lab is involved in research activities concerning radio communication systems (B3G and 4G systems, short-range radio and wireless sensor networks, opportunistic radio, etc.) and signal processing applied to digital communications. Since the past few years the laboratory has been intensively involved in the definition, participation and coordination of several French and European projects.
ENSEA / ETIS
ENSEA is the organisation representing the ETIS laboratory in this project. ETIS is a joint research unit that directly depends on the three mother institutions: ENSEA, the university of Cergy-Pontoise, and the CNRS. ENSEA is a graduate school in electrical engineering, computing science and telecommunications, located in Cergy-Pontoise, which belongs to a system of 200 elite institutions forming the "Grandes Ecoles" (graduate institutions). Currently, ENSEA serves about 600 students, with a staff of 50 tenured professors, 100 visiting professors from industry and partner institutions, with 50 technicians and staff members. The ENSEA research department is composed of 2 research laboratories with activities in Information and Signal Processing (ETIS) and Control and Systems (ECS). The 2 laboratories have more than 100 researchers (including PhD and post-doctoral students), and have a strong involvement in cooperative research programs, both at the national and European levels.
ETIS participated to a large number of collaborative projects funded by the French government. In the field of digital communications, ETIS has contributed in many collaborative projects, five National and European projects, in the field of digital communications and coding.
TU-Delft
TU Delft is one of the three technical universities in the Netherlands and it is renowned for its high standard of education and research in various fields as physics, electrical engineering, computer science, architecture, etc. TU Delft offers undergraduate programs at bachelor and master level, and graduate programs at PhD level. It collaborates with other educational establishments and research institutes both in the Netherlands and abroad and also enjoys partnerships with governments, branch organizations, numerous consultancies, the industry, and companies from the small and medium business sectors. TU Delft contributes in i-RISC with the Computer Engineering Laboratory, which is part of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer.
The Computer Engineering (CE) Laboratory performs research and teaches the engineering discipline of determination, development, and integration of both software and hardware to build a computing system. The laboratory focuses on the definition of system requirements, from embedded to general purpose, their architecture and implementations, and the study and development of tools and software that allow the analysis and synthesis of computing systems. The laboratory formation includes 8 faculty members, 3 staff members, 50 PhD students, and numerous master students. Most of the funded research comes from the STW (Dutch national science foundation), EU (FP6&7, Catrene, Eniac, Artemis) and the industry (Philips, IBM, Intel, Nokia, etc). In the past ten years, members of the group published more than 400 conference papers, 90 journal publications, and were awarded more than 70 USA and EU patents. Additionally, ex-students and computer engineering faculty members have founded 12 start-ups companies.
UPT
"Politehnica" University of Timisoara is one of the largest and most well-known technical universities in Romania and Eastern Europe. Following a recent national classification of the higher education institutes in Romania, Politehnica University of Timisoara has been ranked in the first category. During its more than 90 years of existence, "Politehnica" University of Timisoara had over 100 000 graduates in engineering very appreciated both in Romania and abroad. Currently, it has over 700 permanent staff, 200 PhD students and more than 12000 BSc. and MSc students in a wide range of engineering subjects. The Faculty of Automation and Computer Engineering, one of the 10 faculties of UPT, has strong research expertise in domains like fault tolerance, circuit design and embedded systems.
Universitatea Politehnica Timisoara has received funds from a wide range of European integration contracts, FP7 projects and national research grants. In recent years, Computer Engineering Department has been involved in 1 FP7 project (eMuCo), three European integration funds and 10 national research contracts. Furthermore, the department has maintained close collaboration with both multi-national companies present in Timisoara (Alcatel-Lucent, Continental Automotive, Luxten Lighting Company, etc) and SMEs based in western Romania.
UCC
University College Cork (UCC) is a world-class research-led University that plays a key regional and national role in the development of Ireland's knowledge-based economy. UCC is one of the premier research institutions in Ireland and, internationally, is ranked in the top 2% of universities worldwide -- in the QS World University Rankings 2011, UCC was placed 181st in the world, up 3 places relative to 2010. Established in 1845 by royal charter, the University has four colleges, Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences; Business and Law; Science, Engineering and Food Science; and Medicine and Health -- supporting approx. 20,000 students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
UCC has a long and proud tradition in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) education dating back almost a century. George Boole (1815-1864), the father of Boolean Algebra, a fundamental theory for modern electronic computing and engineering served as Professor at UCC. Today, graduates and academic members of the department continue to contribute worldwide to advancing electrical technologies and are highly regarded by employers and scholars across the globe.
EEE at UCC participated in a large number of collaborative projects funded by the Irish government and EU. In the field of digital communications, UCC has contributed in many collaborative projects (both national and international). The most recent FP7 project is in the area of wireless sensor networks (Genesi: green sensors for structural health monitoring). Faculty from EEE department are founding academic members of the Science Foundation Ireland funded Claude Shannon Institute for Discrete Mathematics, Coding and Cryptography. In the field of circuit design and microelectronics, UCC has a long tradition and it is home to the well-known Tyndall National Institute which incorporates the Microelectronics Competency Centre (MCCI).
ELFAK
The Faculty of Electronic Engineering (ELFAK), University of Nis, Serbia, was founded as a state educational and scientific institution in 1960. The academic undergraduate, master and Ph.D. studies, as well as specialization studies, are carried out at the ELFAK. Currently about 2000 undergraduate and graduate students are enrolled at the ELFAK. The ELFAK has 81 faculty members and 83 teaching or research assistants. The modern faculty building consists of 4 lecture halls, 40 classrooms, 40 laboratories, a computer centre, library, section for foreign languages, etc.
Professor Vasic's pioneering work on iterative decoding and low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, as well as his design of structured codes with parity check matrices composed of circulants, have enabled low-complexity iterative decoder implementations. His recent work has resulted in theoretical advances in analytical characterization of the error-floor phenomenon, and in codes and decoders for the binary symmetric channel with the best error-floor performance known today. He was a Principal Investigator on a number of projects funded by the National Science Foundation, DARPA and industry, which are related to LDPC codes. Prof. Djordjevic has been engaged in seven scientific projects supported by the Ministry of Science of Republic of Serbia, two C.O.S.T. actions and one international project supported by Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.