Centre for Systems and Services Sciences

The Centre for Systems and Services Sciences, or CS3, was inaugurated at a meeting hosted by HP Labs, Bristol, on 6 December, 2005. The Inaugural Meeting attracted a wide range of academic and industrial researchers and systems and services professionals.

The primary aim of CS3 is to advance the development and integration of the sciences that underpin the successful analysis, design, and control of complex systems characterized by the requirements of services. CS3's objectives include supporting research and development that aims to provide a framework for analyzing, specifying, and delivering complex services that meet and track the attainable expectations of their user communities. Specifically we expect the Centre to

• Organize regular hybrid industrial-government-academic research meetings and colloquia;
• Publish advances in the area of Systems and Services Sciences through a refereed journal;
• Identify and encourage pre- and near-competitive research;
• Act as a 'dating agency' for academic, government and industrial partnerships;
• Establish systems and services sciences as a recognized research discipline;
• Establish and champion standards in systems analysis, specification, development, and management in process and training;
• Act as a validator of expertise of competence in systems and services sciences;
• Act as a repository for sample and standard problem sets and research results.

Details of CS3 may be found at www.services-sciences.org.

The first CS3 research meeting will take place in Grenoble, again hosted by HP Labs, 26-28 Septemeber, 2006. The meeting will be followed immediately, at the same site, by the first technical meeting of the NESSI Working Group on Services Sciences & Systems Engineering.

The aims of the meeting are to stimulate the interaction between systems modellers and socio-economic analysts of systems and services, and to address topics such as innovation and quality in services delivery.

Invited Keynote Speakers will include

• Mark Davies, UK National Audit Office
• Bernard Meric, Senior Vice-President, European Union Relations, Hewlett-Packard
• Linda Macaulay, Informatics, Manchester University
• Miroslav Malek, Humboldt University, Berlin

The organizers had hoped to offer a presentation from the UK Cabinet Office. We regret that we have not been able to conclude the necessary arrangements.

Invited Speakers will include

• Kate Blackmon, Said Business School, Oxford
• Piotr Cofta, BT Labs
• Tony Clayton, UK Office of National Statistics
• Kjeld Jensen, BT Labs
• Paul Maglio, IBM Research Almaden
• Richard Taylor, HP Labs
• Youakim Badr, Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon
• Yasmin Merali, Warwick Business School
• Aad van Moorsel, Berlin and University of Newcastle
• Dimitris Assimakopoulos, Grenoble Business School
  
• Chris Tofts, HP Labs
• Katinka Wolter, Humboldt University, Berlin

Here is a draft schedule (to be confirmed).