IP: Polish Trip Report by Dr. Bruce Barnes

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

\
Computer and Software Technology
Newsletter # 35


Computer Science and Engineering Research in Poland
By Bruce H. Barnes


Abstract: During the trip to Poland I had an opportunity to visit the
Warsaw University of Technology, the Wroclav University of
Technology, the Institute of Systems Research at the Polish Academy
of Science, the Polish NSF, and thePoland's super computer center.
The economy appears to be vibrant.  The stores are well stocked with
quality goods. The infrastructure is being improved and modern
computers and communications are being installed. There is an
enthusiasm amongst the faculty. All government funded research goes
through the KBN, Poland's equivalent of the NSF, which has a strong
emphasis on peer review.  The universities and research centers in
Poland now have adequate equipment to carry out high quality research
programs that are comparable to that in the US.     








Report: I recently visited Poland from November 28 to December 6,
1997.  During the trip I had an opportunity to visit the Warsaw
University of Technology, the Wroclav University of Technology, the
Institute of Systems Research at the Polish Academy of Science, The
KBN (the Polish NSF), and ICM (Poland's super computer center).


A few general comments are in order.  The economy appears to be
vibrant.  The stores are well stocked with quality goods. The
infrastructure is being improved and the people seem to be active and
happy.  The academic buildings are being repaired and painted and
modern computers and communications are being installed. There is an
enthusiasm amongst the faculty.


University education in Poland follows the European tradition of five
years of undergraduate instruction. The Polish government is pushing
for more four-year programs.  University education is virtually free
in Poland.  There is no tuition and some students receive a small
stipend.  They still use the academic recognition of D.Sc. or
Habitation.  This follows the Ph.D. degree by about five to seven
years.  The candidates prepare a monograph based on their research,
along with several of their papers, which have been published in
quality journals.  This is then defended in an examination similar to
the final Ph.D. thesis defense.  They explain the process as being
similar to tenure in the United States.  They also follow the
European tradition of having a "Full" Professor in charge of a
relatively large research group covering a broad area of research. 
Each group has several senior lecturers, assistant professors,
graduate and undergraduate students.




Accreditation appears to be an important issue and is of considerable
concern.  There is a trend within the European Community (EC) to
accept each other's engineers.  Poland wants its engineers, including
software engineers, to be accepted within the EC.  They look to
accreditation to help accomplish this.


All government funded research goes through the KBN, Poland's
equivalent of the NSF.  This includes research in agriculture,
medicine and military areas.  I don't know about secret type
research.  They have a strong push to insure quality in their
research programs through peer review.  The organization, process and
philosophy of the KBN are modeled after those of our National Science
Foundation.


The Institute for Computer Science (Instytul Informatyki) is one of
the largest units in the Warsaw University of Technology
(Politechnike Warszawska), with over 2,500 full time students. The
Institute's beginnings were in computer hardware, specializing in the
design and fabrication of special computers for biotechnology
applications.  While the Institute has evolved into a modern Computer
Science and Engineering Department, its research and education
programs maintain an emphasis on architecture and design.  The
Institute has three research laboratories: Computer Graphics,
Information Systems, and Computer Architecture and Software
Engineering.  I did not have an opportunity to delve into their
research in any depth, but I expect it to be of a quality that is
comparable to that which we find in the US.  The problems that the
Computer Graphics Laboratory addresses are of current interest and
they have adequate equipment to carry out the research program. 
Likewise, the projects in the Information Systems Laboratory are in
areas of current interest.  The work on data mining looks very good.


A special mention must be made of Professor Zdzislaw Pawlak and Rough
Sets.  Professor Pawlak is one of the founders of academic computer
science.  He has recently retired as the Head of the Department at
the Warsaw University of Technology.  He is also the originator of
Rough Sets.  These have similar goals and paradigms as Fuzzy Sets, in
that they both deal with uncertainty.  I think that the major
difference is that Rough Sets use discrete probability, while Fuzzy
Sets use continuous math.  The field now has a worldwide collection
of scholars with journals, conferences and workshops.  In 1996 Dr.
Pawlak received the L. Zadeh Best Paper Award for his work in this
area.


The Computer Architecture and Software Engineering Laboratory
represents a natural evolution of computer engineering from a
hardware to software based technology.  Personally, I think that this
makes an excellent base for software development.  Because of this
strong tradition in computer architecture, the undergraduate program
has a strong component in this area and in assembly language
programming.  The laboratory is well equipped with hardware and
software, including simulators and CASE tools.  One of the most
interesting projects that this group is working on is a software
system that they developed in conjunction with the Polish Power


Company.  The software system combines both the analysis and control
of the power system along with management functions.  This provides a
platform for the development of other applications.  They said that a
major American company is interested in licensing this software.


Much of the old Polish Academy has been greatly reduced, but some
portion of it remains, and this is strong and active.  The Systems
Research Institute is one of those.  This institute has evolved over
the years from the Department of Automatic Control, which was founded
in 1954.  The Systems Research Institute focuses on the
methodological foundations for systems analysis.  Its principle areas
of research are: mathematical foundations of the theory of systems,
mathematical models of complex systems, methods of operations
research, theory and applications of computerized methods of
optimization, and theory and application of computer-based decision
systems.  One of their specialties is parallel implementation of
nonsmooth optimization techniques.  The institute has offered the
Ph.D. degree for a long time.  It has recently been granted the right
to offer undergraduate degrees also.  Since the Polish government is
pushing bachelor's degrees, they only have a B.Sc. program.  Thus,
they have the beginning and end of the educational programs.  They
hope to be able to offer a master's degree soon.


Wroclaw is a five-hour train ride from Warsaw.  Since I only had one
day for the visit, I arrived at the University with only enough time
to give my lecture and have some discussions with the Head of the
Department of the Institute of Engineering Cybernetics and the Dean
of the Faculty of Electronics.  The Institute of Engineering
Cybernetics specializes in three major broad areas of research and
education: Computer Science, Control Engineering, and Robotics.  It
is a large program with about sixty permanent staff members.  Their
research program is organized around six research units, each led by
a senior professor.  Computer security is located in the Foundations
of Computing and Digital Communications unit.  So far they have
avoided the government's push to bachelor's degree programs and the
only undergraduate degree that they offer is the master's.


I visited the Information Technology Infrastructure Program at the
Polish Committee for Scientific Research or Komitet Baden Naukowych
(KBN).  The KBN has not integrated the computer infrastructure
development and management with the support on research in computer
science as the NSF has.  The two most significant activities of the
Information Technology Infrastructure Program are the development of
the Scientific and Academic Computer Network (NASK) and the support
of five "low end" high performance computer centers.  They claimed to
have benefited significantly from the lessons learned in the United
States from the development of the Internet.  Their systems consist
of 24 metropolitan area networks connected by a 34Mb/s backbone. 
They use the Polish power company's fiber optic system for the
backbone.  The system is for academic use only.  There are separate
commercial and government networks that can communicate with the


academic network, but the academic network will not carry their
traffic.  The goal of the high performance computer centers is to
provide high quality up-to-date computational resources.  These
include high performance and parallel computers, along with computer
graphics facilities.  They also provide access to a vast amount of
software and several significant scientific databases.  If a project
really needs very high performance computation, it can be obtained at
other European super computer centers.  This system will serve almost
all of their scientific and engineering computational needs.  These
resources are made available through the network.  The Information
Technology Infrastructure also finances the development and
distribution of scientific databases, in particular, biomedical
databases and Poland's library catalogs.  One interesting activity is
the financing of countywide software licenses.  They also support a
few specific conferences.  The program has been very successful. 
Computational infrastructure is more than adequate to conduct high
quality research and education in computer science and engineering.


The Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational
Modeling at the Warsaw University is one of the five centers
supported by the KBN.  Its main computer is a Cray Y-MP/4e.  Its
activities are focused on the theoretical and large-scale computer
simulations in the natural sciences.  There is an emphasis on
research in bimolecular systems, spatial structure formation of
complex systems, and global optimization problems.  One of its
projects in meteorological modeling has a cooperative arrangement
with the US Naval Research Laboratories.  They have developed some
high quality graphics technology for scientific visualization.  This
research has received the Smithsonian Award for Achievement in
Information Technology.


For more information concerning the institutions discussed in the
newsletter contact the follow individuals:


Professor Janusz Sosnowski
Institute of Computer Science 
Warsaw University of Technology
Nowowiejska 15/19
00-665 Warszawa
Poland
Phone +48 22 660 79 15
Email jss () ii pw edu pl


Professor Wojciech Zamojski
Institute of Engineering Cybernetics
Technical University of Wroclaw
Ul. Janiszewskiego 11/17
50-372 Wroclaw
Poland
Phone +48 71 20 34 33
Email zamojski () asic ict pwr wroc pl


Mr. Borys Czerniejewski
Director
Department of Information Systems
Komitet Badan Naukowych
Ul. Wspolna 1/3
Pokoj 218
00-529 Warszawa 53
Poland
Phone +48 22 625 42 25
Email borys () kbn gov pl


Professor Marek Niezgodka
Director
Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical
and Computational modeling
Warsaw University
Ul. Pawinskiego 5a
02-106 Warszawa
Poland
Phone +48 22 8749100
Email marekn () icm edu pl


Key words: Poland, computer science, computer engineering, education,
accreditation, software engineering, computer networks


The opinions and assessments in this report are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Office of Naval
Research- Europe, United States Navy, United States Government or
George Mason University.




More information concerning computer science in Europe and the Office
of Naval Research - Europe can be found on the ONR - Europe home page




http://www.ehis.navy.mil


Bruce H. Barnes Ph.D.
Distinguished Visiting Research Professor 
Department of Information and Software Systems Engineering
George Mason University
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, Virginia 22030


Home address
40692 Manor House Road
Leesburg, VA 20175
Phone (703) 327-2470
Email bhbarnes () erols com 




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