Poul Andersen * Cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe
in Language Engineering
6. Concerted Actions
In order to promote the creation
of networks of scientists in the public and private sectors, the
Commission supports Concerted Actions, which bring together
teams from Eastern and Western Europe. Such Concerted Actions
make it possible to establish permanent cooperation links which
can serve as a basis for all kinds of research activity, and they
encourage interactions between various disciplines, transfer of
technologies, dissemination of results and exchange of information
in general. They encourage cooperation between academies and industries,
and help to identify new partners and to put research workers
in contact with each other and with the responsible authorities
in the different countries.
The intervention of the Commission
covers coordination expenses: meetings, workshops, distribution
of information, exchange with and visits to other institutions
taking part in the action. Financing can also be given for centralised
facilities such as data banks, specialised communication facilities,
preparation and distribution of reference materials. They normally
do not include funding of research, which the participating institutions
are expected to get funded by other means, e.g. through EU-funded
Joint Research Projects (see below).
By their nature, Concerted Actions
are typically 'flat' structures with many participants from different
countries.
In the area of Language Engineering,
two Concerted Actions involving Central & Eastern Europe started
in 1995, both with Romanian participation:
- TELRI - Trans-European Language Resources Infrastructure
TELRI has participants from all
11 Countries of Central Europe, as listed above, and links
with institutions in ex-USSR and in some countries, which formally
were not eligible for full participation. TELRI is coordinated
by Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, Germany,
represented by Dr. Wolfgang Teubert. The other Western European
participants represent leading institutions in Great Britain,
France, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden, most of which are involved
in networking activities within Western Europe such as ELRA (European
Language Resources Association), and can thus serve as a link
between such activities and Central European institutions.
The Romanian participant
in TELRI is the Romanian Academy's Center for Advanced Research
in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing & Conceptual
Modelling, represented by Prof. Dr. Ion Dan Tufis.
- ELSNET goes East
ELSNET goes East is an extension
of ELSNET (European Network in Language and Speech) to
Central & Eastern Europe. Its geographical coverage differs
from TELRI, as it does not have participants from all 11 Central
European countries, but it has participants from Russia, Ukraina,
Belarus.
The Romanian participant
in ELSNET goes East is the same as in TELRI (see above).
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