| | | Annual Report 1995 | |
This section is discursive: it is presented in order to explain UNU/IIST as an RTC (Research and Training Centre) in the framework of the large UNU family of RTCs. It should be of interest to the casual reader who wishes to understand where UNU/IIST fits between universities, research institutes and the software industry.
These readers should be aware that the UNU, and hence its RTCs, does not award any form of academic degrees. UNU/IIST, however, collaborates with several universities in the Region2 in supervising their M.Sc. and Ph.D. students.
The section explains UNU/IIST's Agenda: what it wishes to cover in its technology transfer to industry, universities and research institutes.
UNU/IIST is an RTC whose research (the `R') centres around a combination of `Projects':
and whose training (the `T') -- also considered `Projects' -- takes place along several fronts:
Fellows for items (5.) and (6.) all come from developing countries. They are mostly fully funded by UNU/IIST.
To increase the effectiveness of the research and training projects UNU/IIST further engages in:
These are not main concerns, but help visibility, give rise to useful results, and may also, significantly, lead to or involve main R&T projects.
Common to all R&T Projects is the Programme, typified by items 1-10 above.
Below we put this Programme in perspective.
UNU/IIST is a Science and Technology (S&T) Institute. Our approach to S&T, as laid down in the UNU/IIST Feasibility Study and Statutes, is disciplinary: we research and train in methods of development of software of the highest quality and in methods and subjects of post-graduate and post-doctoral education in software technology.
Thus UNU/IIST is not a multi-, inter-, cross-, or trans-disciplinary RTC, but our advanced development projects bring us in close contact with such disciplinary issues. Thus our target groups are not policy planners (let alone policy makers), but leading edge personnel:
The Programme focuses on (1) advanced development of, (2) research with respect to, and (3) training within Software Support for Infrastructures (see Advanced Joint Development Projects section 5.3) and the related sub-area of Hybrid and Reactive Systems (see Research section 5.2).
This subsection previews the Advanced Development programmatic activities of section 5.3.
Infrastructure development is of major concern in most developing countries. Their transport, financial, health care, education, social services, manufacturing, telecommunications, public utilities (in general) and administration sectors are all major components in their infrastructures. Self-sufficiency: the ability to potentially master own development, highest level education, and research understanding of software for infrastructures is therefore of the utmost importance in any developing country's ability to control its own future. The emphasis of UNU/IIST's applied research, advanced development and training is on understanding public and private sector infrastructures with the aim of providing software architectures that allow arbitrary software packages which are applicable to oftentimes very small fragments of the infrastructure area to collaborate successfully with other such packages by being able to exchange data and/or mutually invoke functions specific to individual packages.
Therefore, UNU/IIST is working with its Fellows on development principles for infrastructure components as well as on prototype software that supports them. `Development' at UNU/IIST means both human capacity building (education and training) and the engineering development of such software. UNU/IIST is currently engaged in preparing a major Event on software technology for Decision Support Systems for Equitable and Environmentally Sustainable Development. This event marks the first time the two meanings of `Development' intertwine.
We research and train with the aim of preparing Fellows from developing countries for their task of securing their countries' independence with respect to the external procurement or own development and use of the large scale software systems typically needed for infrastructure support. We train Fellows in this way, and we jointly develop such software, so that they can take home the know-how and the software. They can then continue, at home, the [internal, national] development of own, potentially exportable, software systems, or they can confidently [externally, internationally] procure software. Thus UNU/IIST encourages the setting up of own software industries and significantly improved software system procurement procedures.
This subsection previews the Research programmatic activities of section 5.2.
The two worlds: (alpha) that of practical, day-to-day management and engineering development of commercially viable and successful software products, and (omega) that of academic education of software engineering candidates and research into software development methodologies have different time dependencies. Actors in the former world usually have a one to two year horizon for their planning decisions while actors in the latter world have much longer horizons, usually from five to ten years.
To ensure understanding of this dichotomy, one that is also present at government planning levels between ministries of industry and technology and ministries of science and education, and to secure relevance of the methods propagated for advanced development and in training courses, events and dissemination, UNU/IIST also pursues research into more foundational matters.
The chosen field: Hybrid and Reactive Systems, with subfields Real-time Systems, Safety Critical and Fault Tolerant Systems, Concurrency etc., relates very closely to the field of Software Support for Infrastructures in that usually the most crucial infrastructure components are of the nature of those listed in this research field and its subfields.
As from September 1995, UNU/IIST has instituted a yearly cycle:
We have adopted this rather rigid "school-year" since it makes planning (administration) easier and utilizes UNU/IIST resources, including Fellow lodgings, more efficiently.
| | | Annual Report 1995 | |