1 Your Question Was in the Light of Initial Delays Please Explain the Exact Role of Remaining

To the Delegation of the European Commission In Thailand Operation Section Kian Gwan House II – 19th Floor 140/1 Wireless Road Bangkok 10330, Thailand

To the attention of Andrew JACOBS - Head of Operation Mads KORN

Trento, March 14, 2008

Subject: reply to the communication of March 4,2004 Reference: OPR-AJ/MK, sep-D(2008) 251

Reference number of the grant Contract: TH/Asia Link/010 (111084) Title of the grant Contract: EASTWEB: building an integrated leading Euro-Asian higher education and research community in the field of the SemanTic WEB

Dear sirs, We proceed step by step in order to reply to the several issued raised in the above letter. The first concern regards the fact that the cofunding of an international event in a country that is non-eligible within Asia-link is problematic, and states that any major deviation from the original contract description must be formally required and approved prior to implementation. We understand the concern, but please note that the first mention of the displacement of come activities in Korea was first discussed with the officer Benedetta Musillo in November 2006 (one year before the event), as can be proven by some e-mail exchanges. Although such discussion was largely informal – and we understand that such level of communication is inappropriate – there are several official documents that mention this fact: three official quarterly reports (n. 5 of April 2007, n . 6 of July 2007 and 7 of October 2007) report with clear evidence that an action was planned in Korea and the progresses in the action organization. The same is evidenced in the Monitoring Report by Arantza Uriarte (dated 18 June 2007) where explicit mention is made that two activities (Conference and School) would have taken place in Korea, with explicit indication that this was a modification of the initial plan. The activities in Korea took place in quarter 8, in November 2007. While we agree that we did not follow what we now understand to be the correct procedure for communicating and asking permission, we want to outline that we never had objections raised to the formal communications that were present in the three quarterly reports and in the Monitoring report. You express a concern on the low participation of Asian stakeholder at the key event ISWC/ASWC. The number of Asian authors is 29, out of a total of 202 (14%). While this percentage is indeed not high, we note that this was the highly competitive top event in the Semantic Web field, and that 2007 was only the second year that a major conference in this field takes place in Asia (the first being ASWC organized by EASTWEB in Beijing in 2006). We therefore actually tend to read this 14% as a success, especially in the light that ALL the authors with an Asian affiliation were from EASTWEB Asian countries (India, China, Thailand). Moreover, considering that 24 authors were from European EASTWEB institutions, we can conclude that the scientific impact of EASTWEB on the conference was higher than 25%.

The next point in the document requests additional information about six points. 1 – Your question was “In the light of initial delays…please explain the exact role of remaining partners. Please elaborate on criteria concerning the privileges foreseen for the most active partners and quantify them.” There is no variation in the number of the partners – they remained the same as foreseen by the original project. However, their level of involvement and their responsibilities have changed. We summarize here the modification that were agreed during the negotiation that was held during the first year, and that was the reason for a delay in the actual start of many project’s activities. a) Action Leaders Leadership on Faculty and Staff mobility was reassigned from Poland to China. b) Mobility of Master Students: - Austria has taken Ireland’s role as one of the two destination for Asian students (the other destination having remained Italy). 12 Asian master students have been moved from Ireland to Austria. c) Mobility of PhD Students. The project was foreseeing that every year, a number (1-3) of PhD student from each University (both Asian and European) would have been selected for a visit to another University for about 6 months, for a total mobility of ca 47 students. Although in the approved project no specification was given about the distribution of students among the partners, our original plan was to have a homogeneous distribution among the partners – as also indicated in the financial plan. We found it difficult to stick with a homogeneous distribution due to the financial difficulties of some of the partners (Poland and Ireland), and to an unforeseen difficulty in finding European candidates. At the light of a different readiness among Asian partners (being China the most active) we plan to allow different allocation of the remaining mobility. A precise subdivision of the remaining slots depends also on whether we’ll be granted a project extension or not – if that is not the case, we will not be able to move more than two third of the planned number (which is consistent with the fact that mobility started one year later due to the long negotiation period).

2) The statement that “cooperation has been rated as very good” was mostly originated from direct conversation with the advisors – since only half of the PhD mobility had ended by Dec.31, 2007 – the rest of them were on-going. We attach however those evaluation sheets that have been collected.

3) The list of the 9 young researchers is the following:

1.3.1.2 Junior Faculty in U Trento Italy 1. Wu Chunguo – from Jilin University to University of Trento 2. Nisachol Chamnongsri – from AIT to University of Trento 3. Malee Kabmala – from AIT to University of Trento 4. Li Zhan Shan– from Jilin University 5. Zue Wang - from Jilin University to Uiversity of Innsbruck 6. Shuyang Sun - from Jilin University to University of Innsbruck 7. Ilya Zaihrayeu - from University of Trento to Jilin University 8. Krizstof Wecel - from University of Poznan Poland to AIT 9. Ying Ding- from University of Innsbruck to University of HongKong and to Jilin University (same trip)

4) “Concerning the university technical staff, please provide a concise overview of what has been provided … “

Instructions were given to: - set up machines to use the videolectures; - download, install and use the client software for videoconference (the server being run at the Università di Trento at no cost for the project) - access and customize profiles on the Digital Library run and maintained by Galway University. Availability of distance education material allows students to get ready for a stage abroad before leaving home completing their background knowledge. Familiarity with the Digital Library and with the videoconference can be reused in other projects/contexts.

5) EASTWEB blueprint - see below in the discussion of Modalities of double master degree/PhD.

6) The list of the PhD mobility at Dec. 31, 2007 was: 1. François Scharffe from Austria to Thailand 2. Caitang Sun from China to Italy 3. Zhou You from China to Italy 4. Narendra Kumar from India to Italy 5. Sapna Gopinathan Ponaraseri from India to Italy 6. Kang-Ping Wang from China to 7. Peng Yu from China to Ireland 8. Thadthong Brammanee from Thailand to Poland 9. Ajaree Naco from Thailand to Poland 10. Rachanee Ungransi from Thailand to Austria 11. Xia Wang from Irleland to Hong Kong

The mobility of Xia Wang and of Rachanee Ungransi was completely covered by appropriate documentation - this might have been the source of the inconsistency reported. An additional student (Zhang Rui) went from Italy to China – but this mobility was at no cost for the project.

Modalities of double master degree/PhD and EASTWEB blueprint. According to the project, “interested EASTWEB Universities will start formal procedures to develop pair-wise Double Master Degree program…pair-wise Double Master Degree programs will be set up during the third year of the project”. We started the process of defining a Double Master Degree program between Italy and China. Relevant difficulties are due to a largely different architecture: Italy has a Bologna-agreement compliant Master (120 ECTS in two years, with 90 credits coming from 18 months of courses and 30 from a 6-month thesis), while Jilin has a three years Master with a long (two years) thesis and only one year of courses. In spite of this, we are about to sign a Memorandum of Understanding, and we devised a 2.5 years Master structure with one year spent abroad. While we are still working out the details, we are confident to be able to make such program acceptable to both administrations, respecting the existing local rules. On this basis, we hope to be able to sign an agreement for Double Degree by the summer. A shared PhD program agreement between Trento and Jilin is also in progress. Also here, signature of a Memorandum of Understanding is imminent, and we expect to sign a more detailed formal agreement by the summer – so as to be able to start the program in the next academic year (2008-2009).

Other partners might then follow the track that Trento and Jilin are outlining. At the same time, we are working at the signature of a double degree agreement between the University of Trento and the University of Innsbruck. This should be easier since both Universities have courses modelled on the Bologna structure, and both are 100% compliant with the EASTWEB blueprint, which defines the minimum content of a curriculum on the Semantic Web. Moreover, a set of double degrees between the two institutions are already operating in different domains. Other partners are still working at increasing their compatibility with the EASTWEB blueprint.

About your notice that the site operated by AIT was not reachable, we checked it several times and it always responded (http://mpuhost02.ait.ac.th:8080/eastweb/ also reachable from the EASTWEB web site www.eastweb.eu in the section “Network”). It must have been a temporary problem. You can have full access to the EASTWEB web site (www.eastweb.eu) by using Username: visitor Password: yphil426 Log in the box at top of page – right after jogging in press “back” to return to the site. The visitor account has been set up with the privileges of full content visibility. You can access to semantic wiki that was used during the AASSW07 by using Username: Marco Ronchettii Password: visitor The wiki is reachable from the EASTWEB web site, form the section dedicated to AASSW07. Please keep in mind that this wiki was essentially a laboratory – the pages were created by teachers and students with the sole purpose of getting familiar with concepts and tools of the Semantic Web.

We understand that future reporting must strictly follow the standard of the reporting format and we will do it.

We hope this answers all your questions.

With bests regards