August 25, 2016

Workshop 1 (Barcelona)

The 1st SOCRATES PROJECT WORKSHOP took place on October 18-20, 2017. It was organized by Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, CSIC-UPC in Barcelona, Spain.

Workshop program in pdf format HERE

Here is a call for external researchers  to the public parts of the workshop.

Topic: Intro and Basic Researcher Tools
Goals: To introduce the researchers to the project, social robotics, the thematic areas, and key technologies and methodologies to be used in the project. To promote strong collaboration between the research groups.
Activities: Presentation of the project and thematic areas by corresponding WP leader. Brief introductions of and by each ESR. Introduction to common software development environments and hardware equipment that will apply to the project, by the industrial partners. Guidelines and policies to counter scientific misconduct. Ethics in experimental research, Quality in research, Creative thinking workshop, Oral Presentation techniques, Team-building activities.

More info about the Seminars on Friday, October 20:

09:30-10:30 Seminar 1.

Research Quality – Thomas Hellström (UMU)

Thomas Hellström is full professor at the Department of Computing Science at Umeå University in Sweden. He has a background in physics and computer science, and works in field robotics, cognitive robotics, and human-robot interaction. He is currently coordinator for the SOCRATES project, was previously coordinator for the FP7 ITN project INTRO, and is also coordinating several other academic research projects. Besides his academic career, he has more than 10 years experience of industrial research and development in management position.

What is Quality in research? It is one of these things that everyone seems to understand until they are asked to define it ("I can’t define it, but I recognize it when I see it!”). I will talk about how we may define Quality, and compare it to how a patent is evaluated. I will also talk about why this discussion is important now, and if increase in quantity necessarily has to lead to a decrease in quality.

10:30-10:45 Seminar 2.

Open Access Publishing Standards – Lennart Edblom (UMU)

Lennart Edblom – Senior lecturer at Umeå University. He was head of the department of Computing Science between 1999 and 2008 (approximate budget of 5M€ per year) and thus has a solid management and budget experience. He has been administrative coordinator for several EU financed projects, e.g. the FP7-PEOPLE-ITN project INTRO, and currently coordinates the administrative parts of SOCRATES.

EU demands all H2020 projects to ensure open access to all scientific publications. But what does that mean in practice? How do we implement that? I will give an overview of the basic principles and rules, and what they imply for us in SOCRATES.

10:45 – 11:00 Coffee Break


11:00 – 13:00 Seminar 3.

Responsible Research Conduct and Research Ethics – Jordi Domingo-Pascual (UPC)

Prof. Jordi Domingo-Pascual is Full Professor of Computer Science and Communications at the Computer Architecture Department of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona Tech – UPC) in Barcelona. He is co-founder and researcher of the inter-departmental research center for Advanced Broadband Communications (CCABA) that is recognized as distinguished research center by the UPC. He is the head of the research group on Broadband Communications Systems and Architectures (CBA) that is a qualified research group by the Catalan Government. He was Director of the Computer Architecture Department (2005-2011). He is Erasmus contact for several bilateral agreements and hosting exchange students since 1997. Since 1988, he has participated in many research projects as main researcher in most of them. He has been advisor of 11 Ph.D. Thesis and has published over 130 papers in international journals and conferences. He did a sabbatical on Economic Aspects in the New Network Architectures at EECS, University of California at Berkeley (UCB) with Professor Jean Walrand (2011-2012). Current research interests: New Internet Architectures and Network Economics and Responsible Research.

Lecture 1: Responsible Research principles
 All human activities have implications on our society. Research activity not only does but also the overall research system is based on trust. Then, responsible research conduct is of out-most importance. The goal of the session is to provide an overview of the rules and professional practices that are considered as responsible conduct of research and engineering.
Lecture 2: Authorship and Plagiarism
 Publication is a key task in research. The role of the authors of a paper. Plagiarism is a serious form of misconduct. Types of plagiarism and how to avoid unintentional plagiarism.