Department of Informatics (INF)
Department of Informatics (INF)
The academic focus of the Department is management and organisation of and methods and tools for the purchase, design, development, adaptation, implementation, operation and control of efficient, innovative IT systems and services for enterprises, authorities, organisations and citizens, based on information and communication technologies (ICT). It includes geographical, economic and institutional globalisation trends in the development, use and organisation of ICT. Department research is therefore characterised by an interdisciplinary research tradition with working relationships with disciplines in the fields of technology, social sciences and the humanities.
The Department's vision of its research and education activities is to be among the best departments in similar fields in Europe and to inspire the development of new information systems in research as well as practice, nationally as well as internationally.
Highlights of 2005
Researchers and representatives from a number of universities and enterprises in India and from Danish ministries and organisations participated in the Euro-India ICT Workshop in May. The workshop constituted a framework within which the Department was able to establish working relationships concerning research and student exchanges with Indian partners (internationalisation).
Annemette Kjærgaard and Karlheinz Kautz presented their research article at ICIS in 2005, thus maintaining CBS' position at the world's leading international ICT conference, where two articles were presented in 2004 (internationalisation).
Jan Damsgaard was the first of the Department's researchers to have an article included in Communication of the ACM, a highly reputable, international journal (internationalisation).
Based on research applications, the Department obtained external grants of DKK 20 mill. for the coming years, of which DKK 15 mill., with a total contract amount of more than DKK 75 mill., are for partnerships with the business community.
Academic profile
For a number of years, INF's academic profile has been characterised by three areas:
- IT systems development and distributed systems
- Management and organisation of IT
- Human-computer interaction
In step with the attraction of projects in these areas, a need for the Department to raise its profile in accordance with more specific areas has arisen, and the Department, therefore, began rewriting its profile (see Research strategy).
Research strategy
A new research strategy was launched in the course of 2005. The dissemination of technologies to all areas of business and social life is posing a greater challenge to research in several areas than ever before. In the context of educational and business relevance, we have a vision of the "laboratory" as a local and virtual activity node – a kind of organisation, which is itself the result of innovative ICT applications under the following designations (in alphabetical order):
- Architecting applications and systems development (SW engineering)
- eGovernment and eParticipation (eGov)
- Embedded SW
- Governance and information economics
- Human-computer interaction (HCI)
- Information management and security
- Integrated systems (ERP)
- Organisations and Information Systems (Org-Design)
- Open source software and open standards
- Ubiquitous mobility.
The laboratories will be the framework of our projects in the years to come under the research core field of Informatics, which was selected in the autumn of 2005.
Research results
In terms of quantity, the Department continues to publish a high number of peer reviewed papers, thereby sustaining its strong profile at the most important international conferences. The Department kept up the rate of foreign language articles.
The publication table for 2005 shows an overall decline in the number of publications; however, there has only been a substantial decrease in the number of working papers. The quality of conference papers is considered to be higher, and editing of papers for publication in journals is estimated to be much more frequent than before and more successful.
As a result of the strengthening of our international position, we have succeeded in becoming a national partner in an international network of informatics research departments: the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) based at the University of Münster in Germany.
Research relations to practice
The Department continues to provide significant new research results in the field of informatics for enterprises, organisations and authorities both nationally and internationally.
The development, nationally and internationally, of informatics for a business critical management discipline for the business community and public organisations is reflected in the influx of research funds, among other things.
The research activities are increasingly financed by external funds as appears from the figure: Research funds 2001-2005, which shows unchanged basic funding since 2004.
Last updated by Communications & Marketing 17/10/2008
