Cloud computing is bringing about a paradigm shift in our ways of computer usage and is leading to novel challenges and opportunities for the software industry. It becomes apparent that a new field with tremendous potential for industrial exploitation is emerging, in which Europe needs to establish excelling research. Timely and focused education of researchers in this area is therefore an essential pre-requisite.
RELATE is an FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) providing an opportunity for researchers who are in the first five years of their careers, and are interested in cloud computing, the opportunity to join established research teams, improve their research skills and enhance their career prospects. Through specialised training modules and dedicated actions (workshops, seminars, summer schools) the research fellows to be recruited by the partners of the RELATE ITN will be exposed to a range of technologies, platforms and tools related to the field of cloud computing, but will also obtain skills and competences in important topics such as research management, intellectual property rights, and exploitation of research results.
The RELATE ITN consortium will recruit a total of 21 research fellows: 18 Early Stage Researchers (ESR) who will register to study for PhD degrees, and three Experienced Researchers (ER) who will engage in post-doctoral level research. The ITN joins organisations that are internationally recognised for their research activities in the area of engineering and provisioning of service-based applications. It comprises 7 full members (specifically, 5 academic research groups acting as "Basic Research Laboratories" and 2 software companies acting as "Applied Research Laboratories"), and 5 associated partners with advisory and supportive involvement.
The 7 full members are the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (coordinator), CAS Software AG, South-East European Research Centre, Universite de Rennes 1, King’s College London, Charles University Prague, and SingularLogic SA. The 5 associated partners are YellowMap AG, Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe (FZI), SAP AG, National Technical University of Athens, and University of Mannheim.