The annual Workshop in ICT is a national ICT event organised by the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Malta. This year's edition will be held on Tuesday at the Aula Magna of the Old University Building in Valletta.
The intent of this event is to promote research and application of technologies and practices in the field of ICT. The workshop solicits the submission of original papers dealing with both theoretical and practical aspects of ICT research and gives the opportunity to graduates and experts in the various areas of ICT to showcase their work and research efforts. Last year, WICT was organised in sterling fashion by a small group of faculty staff who volunteered their personal time and effort to ensure a workshop of the highest possible quality and interest. The faculty is what it is, also through such personal effort, and for this we thank the organisers. The keynote speakers this year hail from ST-Microelectronics, Malta and the University of Leeds.
This event is fast becoming a fixture on the national ICT calendar of events, and we look forward to this year's WICT on Tuesday. Full details are available from www.wict.eu.
Another more established faculty tradition is the annual hosting of the ICT exhibition, which, like last year, was held jointly with the engineering exhibition. As has now become an expected matter, the exhibition presented a whole range of final year student projects that in their vast majority elicited the highest praise from those who visited the exhibition.
Innovation and use of the most modern technology was the hallmark of this year's student projects. So much so, that a number of industry awards were also presented during the opening of this year's ICT and engineering exhibition. For the first time this year, a panel of foreign external examiners selected the top three best final year projects and substantial cash prizes were awarded accordingly.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our event sponsors without whose support, the success of our various events would not have been possible.
This year, the 10th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage was organised under the auspices of the faculty here in Malta, in September. VAST aims to bring together professionals from various fields (some of which are traditionally unrelated) and instigate dialogue on cultural heritage issues, and their associated ICT solutions.
This will help in achieving an effective integration of disciplines in this fast growing and interesting area.
VAST shall be disseminating the idea of a more systematic integration of digital practices in research and education programmes for cultural heritage, exploring good practices, guidelines and skills development possibilities to structure long-term initiatives and move towards a "digital agenda" for archaeology, libraries and cultural heritage. (www.vast2009.org).
New research links were established between the faculty's Department of Micro and Nanoelectronics and CEA-LETI and ST Microelectronics, France. A member of the academic staff in the Department followed a nine-month research internship at CEA-LETI.
Located in Grenoble, CEA LETI (Electronics and Information Technology Laboratory of the French Atomic Energy Commission) is at the leading edge of European research in microelectronics, micro-technology and nanotechnology, and has excellent research collaboration ties with ST-Microelectronics, Grenoble, France.
The 15th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, ICECS 2008, was also organised in Malta in September. ICECS is a major international scientific conference presenting design methodologies, techniques and experimental results in emerging concepts, design techniques, and testing of integrated circuits, micro and nanosensors and their integration into smart micro-systems. For more information please refer to (www.icecs2008.org).
Another international conference being organised with the help of our faculty is the seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation. This conference will be organised in 2010 by the European Language Resources Association in cooperation with a wide range of international associations and organisations.
The aim of LREC is to provide, among others, an overview of the state-of-the-art, explore new research and development directions and emerging trends, exchange information regarding language resources and their application. (www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2010).
Dr Cachia is the dean of the Faculty of ICT at the University of Malta.