Model Based System Development/International Recognition

International Recognition

In May 2004, an International Review Committee under the auspices of QANU published a quality assessment of research in Computer Science in the Netherlands. The research program of ITA was singled out as "Excellent" (in fact ITA was the only group that received the maximal score of 5), the quality of research was judged to be "Very Good", and the relevance "Excellent".

"This program is divided into two subprograms: Real-Time and Hybrid Systems and Security of Systems. Both are very important areas where formal methods can make an important difference. Security is obviously a key critical area of Computer Science today and this group is making significant contributions to it. The quality of the research is very high. There is a combination of mastery of formal methods and excellent application down to practical use. The program manifests strength and vitality. This is a strongly-focused group with good balance between external funding and internal research. The group participates actively in European research programs and has a strong academic reputation. There are opportunities for leverage, for instance the work on security could be expanded to cover more aspects of security. The Commitee welcomes the group to play a more active role on any national initiative related to security issues in the Netherlands and in any case expects the group to play a significant role internationally."

Based on this positive evaluation of the ITA research, in order to increase the visibility of the Nijmegen security research we decided to split off a new Security of Systems group from ITA starting january 2004.