|
Network
of Excellence
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CARiMan
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The
Internet Portal for Computer Aided Risk Management
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Responsible: INA,
IPM
Assistence:
UNIMI, NIEB, all
partners
The integration of European research is strongly based
on tight personal relations among partners from different countries. When the
number of partners is large, as in CARiMan, effective methods for providing
personal contacts among researchers are required.
In order to facilitate the exchange of researchers,
students, and experts among the partners of CARiMan, a Researcher Marketplace (RM)
Web site will be set up. RM will provide a shared place where to publish both
the available positions in the different institutions of the CARiMan NoE and the
abilities of the researchers aiming to spend some periods abroad. RM will
facilitate the matching between the exigencies of institutions and the interests
of researchers in a cooperation framework that enhances the mobility and the
European experience and technological transfer. RM will also provide an alert
service and a mailing list to keep the partners actively informed about the
different possibilities of people exchanging. Typical users of RM will be
post-doc students seeking for a period of specialization and training in foreign
universities, institutions, and companies. Another class of typical users are
the students about to complete their graduation programs and who want to carry
on (part of) their master of PhD curricula or theses in another university. In
this last case, the student exchange among CARiMan partners will be part of more
general European initiatives, such as the Socrates student exchange program. The
exchange of graduate students is a well-known practice for Univerisities but
must be extended also to companies. Sometimes some financial support must be
provided to smooth the standard of living in different countries. This will help
people coming from countries with low standard of living to be in foreign
countries by improving their home salary.
The researcher exchanges promoted by RM will enhance the different
activities of the CARiMan NoE. The adoption of standards, demonstration of
software components, training in using of the software tools, and the survey
works are all improved when the researchers can meet and discuss personally.
More precisely, the following specific exchange activities emerge as required by
the CARiMan partners.
-
Exchange
of specialists in order to improve the quality of the developed algorithms. The
development of reliable classification procedures and models that can
effectively support the physician decisions strongly requires knowledge that
grasp all possible situations and clinical cases and that must collected from
different partners.
-
Exchange
of specialists among partners for developing different methods that allow to
compare the methods and the obtained results with the aim to improve decision
support systems.
-
Exchange
of specialists for the testing and validation of the developed systems and for
the dissemination of results.
As
a more concrete example of how the exchange of researchers can promote the
integration of European research, the JPA about a new system for early diagnosis
of children at risk of dyslexia requires the following specific researcher
exchanges.
·
During the elaboration of the conceptual model, mutual
visits between researchers from scientific laboratories are necessary to define
most promising approaches to dyslexia problem. Moreover, visits to technical
partners aiming at recognising technical resources of CARiMan NoE are foreseen.
·
During the development of the real system, visits in
two directions (from scientific laboratories to technical partners and from
technical institutions to scientific laboratories) are planned.
·
During the experimental validation of the system
technical experts will provide their professional advice to scientists.
·
The adjustment of the new tools to specific clinical
purposes (diagnose and support of dyslexia) requires mutual contacts between
scientists, clinicians (educators), and technical experts.
·
Participation of all (technical, scientific and
clinical) partners will be required at the stage of spreading the achieved
potential to the end users by organisation of workshops and practical trainings
Besides the above-mentioned forms of researcher
exchange among the CARiMan partners, more informal ways for knowledge transfer
can be adopted. For example, researchers can spend just some days or few weeks
in another institutions in order to complete a very short and detailed research
activity, or to provide a professional advice, or to write a paper summarizing
the results obtained during a joint activity, and so on. These short informal
visits will arise as a spontaneous form of cooperation among the partners and
will not be regulated in order to fully exploit their innovative and creative
potential.
Finally,
it will be important to evaluate how the researchers exchange solutions of
CARiMan could be integrated with corresponding solutions adopted in other
Networks of Excellence. This will favour "horizontal" meetings among
different NoEs in order to focus on the exchange of ideas for possible
collaborations or publications at the light of the integration of the European
research. For example, activities B4.3, D1, D2, and D3 of CARiMan could all
benefit from these "horizontal" meetings.