As part of the JISC e-Research team, Frederique is focusing on the technologies regarding the research process and lifecycle, managing the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) and Research Information Management (RIM) programmes. She joined JISC in 2006 as a Programme manager. For 2 years she served as Project Secretary and Community Support Manager at SURFnet, the super high bandwith University Research Network in the Netherlands. And was Business Development Consultant at NOB Cross media facilities, the technology facilitating company for the Dutch public broadcasters (now Technicolor). She has an MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management and a Bachelor in Industrial design engineering from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Frederique has a specific interest in research community building and digital and social networks.

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is one of the UK national funding agencies. JISC inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in education. JISC provides: a world-class network - JANET; access to electronic resources, new environments for learning, teaching and research, guidance on institutional change, advisory and consultancy services, regional support - RSCs. JISC funds a wide range of infrastructure, services, innovative projects and studies. JISC manages and funds more than 200 projects within 23 programmes. JISC also supports 49 Services that provide expertise, advice, guidance and resources to address the needs of all users in HE and FE.

Stuart has over thirty years experience in IT, twenty seven of which have been spent working in Higher Education. Until August 2007 he was employed by Leeds Metropolitan University as their Information Services Manager where he was responsible for the acquisition, configuration and implementation of corporate information systems. Until he left Leeds Met, Stuart was a member of the UCISA CISG committee and UCISA Executive and worked on a variety of projects with JISC. Since leaving Leeds Met, Stuart has successfully worked as a freelance consultant (www.stuartbolton.com) specializing in the HE and FE sectors. He has worked with a range of universities, HEFCE and JISC Infonet on projects as varied as the Bologna process, CRMs, Knowledgebase systems, integrating CPD administration into mainstream student record systems, the Research Excellence Framework and, of course, Research Information Management.

Lingjærde is the leader of one of the groups in the department at USIT (University Centre for Information Technology) that develops national information systems. She is responsible for the acitivity ‘Data modelling’ in all the systems developed in the department. She is the leader of the Frida developing team. In addition to being the leader of the developing group of Frida she has in the same period (since 2003) been project manager for the implementation Project for Frida, and from 2005 she has been Manager of the joint venture Frida. To day this work implies: coordinating the activities among the participants, handling user input on future releases, liaison officer for public institutions that by law or otherwise require information from Frida.
Lingjærde is also participating in several national and international committees related to research activities. The Norwegian committees are appointed by the ministry or The Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions.

Frida is an integrated research environment for the documentation and presentation of research activities, research results and scientific competence. Data from Frida is used to generate statistics for research activities at Norwegian universities. Information provided by this system plays a major role in the annual funding of universities. A working group was established in 2008 to look at the possibility of getting a common national system. The ministry decided in 2009 that a restructured Frida is going to be the common Research system in Norway including 150 institutions. The main purpose of restructuring the Frida system is to make more of the data shared / common between the institutions and at the same time keep the institutional view, ownership and responsibility of the data.

Head of department at the Computer Centre at University of Oslo. Responsible for developing information systems for higher education. Among the systems developed are:
- SO, Admission services for undergraduate studies at higher education
- FS, Student Record system
- Frida, A system for registration and documentation of research activities.
SO is used by all universities and colleges in Norway. The student Record system FS is used by 40 institutions. Frida is implemented at the four universities and some smaller institutions. Frida is going to be the national system including 150 institutions in 2010/2011. In addition to being head of department Andora has been project manager for the implementation Project for the Student Record system, and from 1998 -2009 the Manager of the joint venture FS. From 2003 Andora has also been member of the secretary of Frida. Andora is also participating in several national and international committees concerning research, student and admission systems.

Frida is an integrated research environment for the documentation and presentation of research activities, research results and scientific competence. Data from Frida is used to generate statistics for research activities at Norwegian universities. Information provided by this system plays a major role in the annual funding of universities. A working group was established in 2008 to look at the possibility of getting a common national system. The ministry decided in 2009 that a restructured Frida is going to be the common Research system in Norway including 150 institutions. The main purpose of restructuring the Frida system is to make more of the data shared / common between the institutions and at the same time keep the institutional view, ownership and responsibility of the data.

Marjan got her PhD in Biochemistry, she teached Science and Informatics and worked on the implementation of IT in education. At SURFfoundation she leads the SURFshare programme on the improvement of scholarly communication via the repository based knowledge infrastructure in the Netherlands with the key topics Open Access an Enhanced Publications. An enhanced publication is a journal article coupled with research output like data sets, multimedia files, databases, virtualisations or simulations. See this as a first step in future scholarly communication with linked data and web 2.0 interaction. The CRIS software Metis plays an important role in the knowledge infrastructure. Repositories and Metis are harvested by the central science portal NARCIS (www.narcis.nl). Marjan is also involved in the EU-projects DRIVER, PEER, OpenAIRE and eINFRANet.

SURF is the collaborative organization for over sixty higher education institutions and research institutes aimed at breakthrough innovations in ICT, thus providing the foundation for the excellence of higher education and research in the Netherlands. SURF consists of three organizations that each have their own field of activity: SURFfoundation, SURFnet and SURFdiensten. The first, SURFfoundation, initiates, guides and stimulates ICT innovation through sharing knowledge and partnerships. SURFnet develops and operates the national SURFnet6 network and provides innovative services in the areas of security, authentication and authorisation, group communication and video. SURFdiensten is the organization for licences for higher education and research that facilitates the use of ICT.

Bert is the Information Officer for Delft University of Technology (DUT). He has an MSc in Mathematics. In the past he has been working as a scientific programmer, and as an assistant professor of statistics. Now he is responsible for the university wide information services and chairs the meetings of the functional managers of DUT concern information systems . He is responsible for the introduction of an Architecture Development Method in the university. In the 3TU. Federation he chairs the working group architecture. He is, within SURFfoundation, a member of several advisory committees. One of his concerns is the architecture of CRIS’s in the Netherlands.

Delft University of Technology, with 16000 students and 6500 fte staff, is the largest of the three Dutch Universities of Technology, collaborating in the 3TU. Federation. In 2008 DUT produced circa 250 Phd’s and circa 8500 scientific papers. DUT is a partner in the IDEA League.

Jean-François Desnos retired in August 2009 from Université Joseph Fourier (UJF) in Grenoble. Dr Jean-François Desnos has been Head of Information Systems at UJF, then in charge of the MIS Department for the five Grenoble Universities. He led the Informatics’ team of the GRAAL French IT national project about an information system on Research (2002-2009) and the French national Data Wharehouse Project (2000-2002) for the AMUE national consortium. For the 2009-2010 Academic year, he is involved in the UJF “Javacard” project, and gives lectures in computer science at Université Pierre Mendès France in Grenoble. As the EUNIS past president (2006-2009), he is still active in EUNIS working groups.

GRAAL is an application system designed to manage the French universities research labs, and to describe their staff, financial means, and scientific activities. GRAAL is a tool for the laboratory, improves communication with the Ministry and other partners (national research bodies and others), and provides indicators to the President of the University. The GRAAL project is a cooperation between the Universities of Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Strasbourg, Lille 1, Nancy 1 and Paris Descartes. It’s used by 44 universities in France.

Geneviève GRAS is a Research engineer, University Joseph Fourier – Grenoble 1. She is the Director of Research and Research Valorization since 2001. She was Director of Studies at the Faculty of Medicine (1993-2000), and Administrative Director of the University Health Center for Students (1973-1993).

GRAAL is an application system designed to manage the French universities research labs, and to describe their staff, financial means, and scientific activities. GRAAL is a tool for the laboratory, improves communication with the Ministry and other partners (national research bodies and others), and provides indicators to the President of the University. The GRAAL project is a cooperation between the Universities of Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Strasbourg, Lille 1, Nancy 1 and Paris Descartes. It’s used by 44 universities in France.

Béatrice Meier-Muller is the Director of Research at Université de Strasbourg. She is presently the functional manager of the GRAAL project.

GRAAL is an application system designed to manage the French universities research labs, and to describe their staff, financial means, and scientific activities. GRAAL is a tool for the laboratory, improves communication with the Ministry and other partners (national research bodies and others), and provides indicators to the President of the University. The GRAAL project is a cooperation between the Universities of Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Strasbourg, Lille 1, Nancy 1 and Paris Descartes. It’s used by 44 universities in France.

Laurent Pilet is responsible for developing information systems for the two universities of Clermont-Ferrand (France). Laurent is the technical manager of the GRAAL project since 2006, is part of the steering committee and project committee. He coordinates the activities of six developers and their local managers. Responsible for development and technical support, Laurent is also in charge of relations with other national projects on different themes: open archives, referential of persons and structures.

GRAAL is an application system designed to manage the French universities research labs, and to describe their staff, financial means, and scientific activities. GRAAL is a tool for the laboratory, improves communication with the Ministry and other partners (national research bodies and others), and provides indicators to the President of the University. The GRAAL project is a cooperation between the Universities of Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Strasbourg, Lille 1, Nancy 1 and Paris Descartes. It’s used by 44 universities in France.

Uwe works as head of the divison "IT for Higher Education". The division has about 170 employees in software development, customization, support, training, and hosting services . The software and services are used by 240 universities (mostly) in Germany. The main development activity is the new integrated software generation “HISinOne”.

HIS is a nonprofit organization supporting university administrations and higher education policy-makers in Germany. HIS combines the software house for higher education administration, higher education research (empirical studies …) and university development (planning, consulting ...) .

José Luis Poy, Computer Engineer, has been working in SIGMA Gestión Universitaria from the very first day and is holding the Operations Director position since 1999. He is in charge of the development department which means directing and supervising new development projects, product evolution and product maintenance.

SIGMA Gestión Universitaria is a non profit consortium founded more than 15 years ago by some Spanish public universities in order to find solutions to their needs of managing business processes. This was done by developing a common student information system and a research management system. The model of the company is based on a collaborating approach and this is reflected in main decisions about new developments being taken in community based committees and topic work commissions. Our community is currently formed by 8 of the most important Spanish universities and 2 private centers which means our Student Information System being used by over 20% of total Spanish public universities students. Regarding to our Research Management System, it is focused in three areas: Management, Scientific Production, Promotion.

Pierluigi is the leader of one of the groups in the department at CINECA that provides support and services to the Italian Ministry of Education and Research. He manages the system for the national funds delivery process, application submission, application assessment and grant delivery. Also, he is responsible for the implementation of the national information system for research results and researcher evaluation. All Italian researchers deal with these systems.

CINECA is an Italian Consortium made up of 40 Italian Universities, 1 research institute, the CNR (National Research Council) and the Italian Ministry of University and Research. Since the 1990’s CINECA has supported Italian universities developing information systems for the management of the main administrative areas (Students, Research, Finance, HR ..).

Fabrizio is the head of the Research Solutions for HE Institutions team. He manages the development of the Cineca Research Information System for Universities (which is called U-GOV Research). Hence he’s been working for years on management and assessment of research pubblications/outputs, and on research project management. Since users, from big universities/labs to small advanced research centre, are equally spread throughout all Italy, he usually travels a lot from North to South.

CINECA is an Italian Consortium made up of 40 Italian Universities, 1 research institute, the CNR (National Research Council) and the Italian Ministry of University and Research. Since the 1990’s CINECA has supported Italian universities developing information systems for the management of the main administrative areas (Students, Research, Finance, HR ..).

Research Management System Manager, OCU: General Manager of the system (functional, technical and operational).

Oficina de Cooperación Universitaria, OCU, is a consortium of 6 public Spanish Universities (Alcalá, Carlos III de Madrid, Rey Juan Carlos, Salamanca, Valladolid, and Castilla-La Mancha) with participation of Santander Banking Group with the main objective of providing Information Systems to Spanish and Latin American Universities. The company started its activity in 1994 and its ERP called UNIVERSITAS XXI is used by more than 70 Universities World Wide.

Projects Director-Institutional Intelligence Area: expert in the area of Institutional Intelligence and Change Management. 9 years of experience in Business Intelligence applied to Higher Education institutions.

Oficina de Cooperación Universitaria, OCU, is a consortium of 6 public Spanish Universities (Alcalá, Carlos III de Madrid, Rey Juan Carlos, Salamanca, Valladolid, and Castilla-La Mancha) with participation of Santander Banking Group with the main objective of providing Information Systems to Spanish and Latin American Universities. The company started its activity in 1994 and its ERP called UNIVERSITAS XXI is used by more than 70 Universities World Wide.

Inside the euroCRIS organization, Geert is an active member of the CERIF Taksgroup. Inside EWI he is the project manager in the FRIS (Flanders Research Information Space) programme where semantics management for Research Information, based on SBVR standard and methodology and implementing CERIF as exchange and storage format are important focal points.

euroCRIS is a not-for-profit association of Current Research Information System (CRIS) experts and is dedicated to improvement of research information availability in Europe. Its members together work on how best to use advanced ICT to improve research information availability and quality - using advanced database, knowledge base, process and workflow, user interface, ubiquitous computing and GRID technologies. euroCRIS has been developing an interoperability standard called CERIF (Common European Research Information Format), an EC-recommendation to member states. CERIF aims at being the glue that holds the information systems together, allowing for interoperability and communication.