The Goals and Strategy of ECSEL

The purpose of ECSEL is to address, in the form of research projects and a graduate school, the range of problems that arise or manifest themselves, when computer software is used for industrial purposes. With this overriding goal, we wish to contribute to a national effort for making our industry more competitive.
The major means of doing that is to increase the quantity and quality of graduate education in industrially relevant areas of research. In particular, it aims to bring together computer science and systems engineering, in a broad sense, and combining them with other kinds of engineering such as electrical and mechanical engineering. Furthermore ECSEL aims to focus on the combined use of these branches of engineering in the design and use of complex systems.

The goal of ECSEL is a large and integrated research activity. This reflects of course that we can build on a large base of existing research in computer science and in systems engineering, ranging from telecommunications, via automatic control, to electrical and mechanical applications.

• Reduced development costs for new products
• Reduced development time for new products
• More innovative products
• Creating an attractive environment for high-tech industry.

ECSEL's Area of Interdisciplinary Research

The combination of computing and general engineering is the key concept for ECSEL. It is important for industry in several ways. On one hand, software is largely an enabling technology, which can be used to enhance the power of other technologies and to speed up their development. On the other hand, we observe that problems which manifest themselves as software problems often have their roots and their solutions in other aspects of engineering. An integrated understanding is necessary for dealing with such situations.

Research Training with high Industrial Relevance

Both the education of Ph.D:s and the education of licentiates are of importance for the ECSEL Graduate School. Although many of the graduate-school activities serve equally well for the Ph.D. track and the licentiate track, we consider it important to identify clearly the specific needs of each, so that both can be designed in an optimal way. Graduate training and a graduate school are also important for industry in a third way, by safeguarding the continuous renewal of the engineering educations, in particular for [civilingenjörer]. These considerations have been used as guidelines within ECSEL.