HAPPY NEW 2017!

CISTER had an eventful 2016 calendar with many important milestones. CISTER continued its momentum, organising a top conference – RTSS 2016 - maintaining its publication portfolio in leading conferences and journals with over 60 publications, and four new projects: ENABLE-S3, SAFECOP, KhronoSim and DSGRID.

CISTER has over the last few years placed significant effort in setting up a strong research infrastructure. This was especially trying given the period of global contraction and the dearth of national funding opportunities. The long delayed evaluation, that had taken considerable resources of CISTER in the past, also took place. Nonetheless, the efforts towards attracting research students and staff, and the strategic target of CiTech and partnerships with industries has now started yielding results. This has also required CISTER to adapt and reshape its internal structure.

Looking ahead at 2017, our aim is to expand on these gains. With our focused initiatives, we anticipate a good growth in research student intake. We aim to increase our participation in cutting-edge research projects and industry collaborations, both national and abroad. For this, we intend to tackle competitive calls from ECSEL, H2020, PT2020 Co-promotion as well as Direct contracts. Our core areas of embedded and real time systems continue to have a strong fit with EU strategic research areas. As an example, from 2017 onwards, CISTER will be involved in the Productive 4.0 European research project; this is a lighthouse EU initiative in Industry 4.0, a domain that has attracted considerable attention. And finally, the upcoming iteration of the evaluation process will allow us to positively project our achievements and future strategic goals.

Also internally CISTER has started taking some important steps towards this aim. The definition of a new set of internal regulations, the re-election of Prof. Eduardo Tovar as the director as well as the reinforcement of the Board of Directors with new members, and, importantly, for the first time the election of a President of the Scientific Council, Prof. Pedro Souto. These, and further envisioned structural developments, enable us to formulate and implement the CISTER vision going forward.

We look forward to a productive year and wish you the same.