Czestochowa University of Technology
Czestochowa University of Technology, established in 1949, is the biggest institution of higher education in the region. During sixty years of its scientific and educational activity it has become part of history and tradition of the country, of the industrial Czestochowa region as well as the city itself. In national rankings of state higher education institutions, the University has been classified very high. The faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science established at the same time as the university, i.e. in 1949. In 1993 the faculty was awarded the FEANI (the European Federation of National Engineering Associations) accreditation which allows the graduates, after the required diploma registration, to apply for the professional title of the European Engineer (EUR ING.). The EUR ING diploma is also recognized outside the European Union countries, which helps to find a job abroad without any diploma recognition procedure. There is also a possibility to study at foreign universities within the framework of European programmes. The graduates of the faculty find employment in machine, electro-machine and automotive industry, and the alumni of the Computer Science module are sought-after specialists in insurance and IT companies and also in banks and other financial institutions. Scientific and research activities carried out at the faculty involve a wide range of specialist options covering such subject areas as mechanical engineering, machine construction and maintenance, mathematics and computer science. The faculty collaborates closely with foreign and national academic centres. The international scientific cooperation concentrates on research projects run within European Union Framework Programmes. The participation in the aforementioned programmes develops contacts with leading European academic institutions (Imperial College, Cambridge, Munich, Gandava, Darmstadt) and industrial centres (Rolls-Royce UK, Rolls-Royce Deutschland, Turbomeca, Fiat Avio, MTU, Snecma Moteurs, Renault, WV). The academic staff of the faculty participates in various scientific and technological European projects such as COST Programme or 6th and 7th Framework Programmes. Additionally, they carry out long-term bilateral projects within mutual agreements between governments (with universities in Brussels, Gandava and Grenoble, the Pulp and Paper Research and Technical Centre in Grenoble, Thermomechanics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences) and bilateral agreements with enterprises (Voith Paper, Renault, Kadant Lamort, WV ).
Institute of Computational Intelligence
Department of Computer Engineering was created by Professor Leszek Rutkowski in 1996, as a part of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. Earlier, most members of this department were employed at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the same university, i.e. Czestochowa University of Technology. Professor Leszek Rutkowski is a head of the department, and Professor Robert Nowicki is a deputy head. The Department of Computer Engineering is well-known in Poland from the scientific research concerning computational intelligent systems, and soft computing methods, especially neural networks, fuzzy systems and evolutionary algorithms. The head of the department, Professor Leszek Rutkowski, is a co-founder and a President of the Polish Neural Networks Society, and most of the faculty staff of the department are members of the society. The Department of Computer Engineering and the Polish Neural Networks Society have been involved in organizing international conferences on neural networks. The conferences, entitled "Neural Networks and Their Applications" were held in 1994, 1996, 1997, and 1999, in Poland. The next conferences, entitled "Neural Networks and Soft Computing, took place in Zakopane, Poland, in 2000, and 2002. The Department of Computer Engineering cooperates with many universities in Poland and other countries, including USA and Japan. Among participants of the conferences are famous, distinguished professors, as invited speakers.
University of Geneva
The Stochastic Information Processing (SIP) group, created in 1996, has a long record of research in stochastic image modeling and processing, multimedia security and information-theoretic methods, published in over 200 journal articles, patents, conference papers, reports (see http://sip.unige.ch). In particular, the group has contributed to state-of-the-art methods in robust watermarking, multimedia authentication, robust perceptual hashing, low-complexity multiclass classification, stochastic modeling of images with applications to image restoration, denoising, compression and digital data-hiding for content copyright protection, authentication and secure communications, multiterminal communications and distributed coding. Several algorithms developed by the SIP group are top-ranked techniques according to international benchmarks. The expertise of the group in the stochastic image modeling, information-theoretic methods and stochastic machine learning applied to large-scale problems will also contribute to the current proposal. The group currently comprises about 8 people plus several Master students. The work has been financed by the Swiss Priority Program in Information and Communication Structures (SPP-ICS) project “KryPict: - A software environment for copyrighting, authenticating, archiving and retrieving pictorial documents in multimedia databases” (1996-2000), by the European Esprit project “JEDI-FIRE” (1997-1999), by a grant from a startup company DCT - Digital Copyright Technologies Ltd. that we helped to create (2000-2001), and by the European IST project “Certimark” (2000-2002). We also have been granted the SNF project 21-064837.01 “Generalized stochastic image modeling for image denoising, restoration and compression” (2001-2003) as well as several projects within the framework of the National Center of Competence in Research Interactive “Multimodal Information Management IM2” (NCCR IM2) (http://www.im2.ch) (finished in December 2009). In April 2003, Prof. S. Voloshynovskiy was awarded with the SNF Professor Boursier grant (2003-2007) “Blind detection of hidden data” for the investigation of information-theoretic fundamentals of multimedia security based on digital data-hiding. In 2006, the group was granted the FNRS project “Information-theoretic document authentication and self-recovery based on digital datahiding” and “Secure unclonable identification/authentication codes based on natural randomness” in 2007. The group also participated to two EU NoEs ECRYPT dedicated to information security and SIMILAR specialized in multimodal information-theoretic signal processing (both project finished in 2008). Prof. S. Voloshynovskiy was a co-leader of NoEs ECRYPT, WAVILA virtual lab. In 2003, the SIP group created a second spin-off company Anteleon Imaging Sarl. The group is also funded by industrial partners including the created spin-offs, which have reached the stage of strategic investment and partnership with key market players.
