ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 16 – systems science
5 professors but only 14 articles of the same category. Also, the figures
show that there has not been a growth in publications and in PhDs from
2003 to 2007, even though the number of professors has doubled. One
of the explanations could be that the staff has many teaching obligations,
and in that respect they are not alone – this is a well-known problem for
Computer Science departments.
Department head has shown considerable dynamicity and energy. He was
able to attract external young faculty of very high caliber, e.g., in computer
graphics. The department is now composed of a number of mostly
independent tracks and the department head has expressed this situation
as reflecting his actual policy. Future plans for the department mainly
consists in considering which additional tracks could be added, funds
permitting. For example the Future Directions section lists Usability and
Security. These are hardly related to the other parts of the department
and would require building up complete new groups.
It is the feeling of the panel that this is the wrong way to go. We must admit
that some of the tracks will remain mostly independent. For example
computer graphics is an important but narrow area that will remain so.
However, we observe at the same time that a group exists on embedded
systems design that will also be faced with multi-core architectures. We
hardly understand future plans for the very nice activity around RT-Java:
do you want to focus on increasing its impact? Alternatively, do you
want to open it? (For example you could consider making its scheduling
aspect a room for deeper and more formal investigation, jointly with the
automatic control department.) Finally, the track on software development
methods may benefit from getting embedded into the larger area,
say, of embedded systems design where methods from your side could
be combined with the skills of the control department regarding model
based design (this is just an example of what you could do, not a suggestion
by itself). But in any case, thinking about all those things should be
undertaken. Definitely so.
7. Automatic control
7.1 Opening remarks regarding the grain for the evaluation
As the department head Anders Rantzer himself suggested, we have
decided to evaluate this department as a whole. While several topics and
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