S P E C I A L R E P O R T
CRACS becomes INESC Porto’s member
Looking for partnerships within the industry 
CRACS - Centre for Research in Advanced Computing Systems, member of INESC Porto LA, develops activities in the areas of programming languages, parallel and distributed computing, data-mining, intelligent systems and software architectures, with special emphasis on the effort to solve actual problems in multidisciplinary collaboration areas, such as Biology, Medicine and Chemistry.The beginning of CRACS
According to Álvaro Figueira, researcher at CRACS, this research centre was created in 2007 after eight researchers holding a PhD from the Computer Science Group (NCC) left LIACC, a research unit from the University of Porto established in 1988.
The researcher states that “The recent changes in the organisation of research activities in Portugal clearly favour the cooperation with larger R&D Units. This was an important step for the establishment of CRACS last May (2007) and its integration within INESC Porto Associated Laboratory”.
Aims
Coordinated by Fernando Silva, this group is set up by eight staff members holding a PhD, two associate members holding a PhD and eight PhD students. In the group, there are also junior researchers, such as MSc students and research grant holders.
CRACS aims at the development of basic and applied research causing an international impact, post-graduate training for young researchers and also the establishment of partnerships within the industry so as to promote and publish the results of the research.
Group Activities
Some members from CRACS are coordinating projects, such as CALLAS: Calculi and Languages for Sensor Networks (from 1/2008 to 12/2010) and STAMPA: Sophisticated Tabling Mechanisms for Prolog and their Applications (from 1/2008 to 12/2010). There are also other members participating in projects such as Daidalos II (2006-2009), Myddas: MySQL/Yap Deductive Database System (2005-2008) and Site-O-Matic – Web Site Automation (2005-2008).
Over the past two years, CRACS’ members have published 59 peer-reviewed articles (23 in 2006 and 36 in 2007). Seven on these articles were published in international magazines, three of them are book chapters, while the remaining 25 were published in conference proceedings by important publishing companies.
Expectations for the future
Most of CRACS’ members are PhD professors or students from the Department of Computer Science at the Faculty of Science from the University of Porto. Other members are associated to the Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology (IBMC) and to the University of Lisbon. Nevertheless, the Centre for Research in Advanced Computing Systems not only wants to expand and strengthen the group, namely in international cooperation, but also to succeed in its integration at INESC Porto, LA.
Advantages of the integration at INESC Porto
Questioned about what CRACS has to gain from the integration at INESC Porto, Álvaro Figueira stated that “the establishment of synergies with INESC Porto’s Units will originate collaborative scientific projects as well as projects applied to the industry. In that sense, INESC Porto’s experience and contact network is an essential advantage for CRACS”.
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