Contents

1. European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI - 2002)

2. European Summer School on Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI - 2001)

3. Unexpected High Student Boom in the "International Masters Programme in Computational Logic" at the Technische Universität Dresden.

The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is this year in its 14 edition and will take place in Trento from the 4th to the 17th of August 2002, co-organized by the Istituto Trentino di Cultura and the University of Trento, under the auspices of the European Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI).

Initiated by a small group of researchers, the first ESSLLI was held in Groningen (The Netherlands) in 1989. Successfully fighting off the many financial, organisational and scientific difficulties inherent in making such an event come true, ESSLLI has now become a significant event in the logic, language and computation community.

A mark of its significance is the large number of applications to hold courses and workshop that were received last year : in total, 97 such applications were received from which the scientific committee had the difficult task of selecting 42 courses and 6 workshops. A new feature this year is that all courses and workshops are interdisciplinary bearing on logic & language, logic & computation or language & computation. As usual, courses are classified as foundational (requiring no knowledge of the field), introductory or advanced while the workshops present a range of selected papers centered around a specific topic.

Other features of the summer school include the evening lectures (five this year), a satellite workshop on "Learning algorithms for lexicalised grammars", a colocated event "The 7th conference on Formal Grammar" and a student session which this year boasts 17 oral presentations and 12 posters (The full program, with the detailed description of the courses and workshops, is available on the web site www.esslli2002.it).

All in all, it seems that ESSLLI has become what it was meant to be: "an important meeting place and forum for discussion for students and researchers interested in the interdisciplinary study of Logic, Language and Information".

The ESSLLI Summer Schools are annually organized under the auspices of FoLLI the `European Association for Logic, Language and Information'.

The main focus of ESSLLI is on the interface between linguistics, logic and computation. The school has developed into an important meeting place and forum for discussion for students, researchers and IT professionals interested in the interdisciplinary study of Logic, Language and Information.

This year ESSLLI is organized by ITC irst and University of Trento, ittakes place in Trento, Italy, August 5 16. The programme is available at: http://www.esslli2002.it/. Vienna (Austria) will host ESSLLI in the year 2003.

Previous ESSLLI summer schools have been highly successful, attracting around 500 participants from Europe and elsewhere. They were held in Groningen (The Netherlands, 1989), Leuven (Belgium, 1990), Saarbrucken (Germany, 1991), Colchester (UK, 1992), Lisbon, (Portugal, 1993), Copenhagen (Denmark, 1994), Barcelona (Spain, 1995), Prague (Czech Republic, 1996), Aix en Provence (France, 1997), Saarbrucken (Germany, 1998), Utrecht (The Netherlands, 1999), Birmingham (UK, 2000), Helsinki (Finland, 2001).

In previous editions of ESSLLI the courses covered a wide variety of topics within six areas of interest: Logic, Computation, Language, Logic and Computation, Computation and Language, Language and Logic. The novelty of this year edition is the special emphasis on the interface between the basic areas (Logic, language, and Computation). So, this edition offers about 50 courses, organized into three interdisciplinary areas (Language & Computation, Language & Logic, and Logic & Computation), at a variety of levels (foundational, introductory, advanced), as well as a number of workshops.

The courses and workshops. There are three dierent types of courses: Foundational, Introductory and Advanced. Foundational Courses aim to provide truly introductory courses into a eld. The courses presuppose absolutely no background knowledge, and should be accessible to people from other disciplines. The Introductory Courses aim to give students the chance to familiarize themselves with subjects and problem areas which does not fall within the eld of expertise of staat their home institutions. Advanced Courses, instead, are aimed at the acquisition of more specialized knowledge about already familiar topics. They also provide the opportunity for researchers to give intensive courses at high levels.

The Workshops are intended to encourage collaboration and the crossfertilization of ideas by stimulating in-depth discussion of issues which are at the forefront of current research in the field.

Student Session, Evening lectures, and Satellite Events. In addition to courses and workshops there are a student session, evening lectures, and a number of satellite events, such as `Formal Grammar.

During ESSLLI'96 in Prague, by way of experiment, the rst ESSLLI Student Session was organized. Since then its aim is to provide Masters and PhD students with an opportunity to present their own work to a professional audience, thereby getting informed feedback on their own results. Unlike workshops, the student session is not tied to any specic theme. And each year, the Best Paper Prize is awarded, after evaluating the quality of the submission and presentation. In addition, those students involved each year in the organization of the student session, obtain a valuable experience on running such scientic event, having to deal by themselves with reviews, editing of the proceedings, etc. Even though the session is completely on the hands of the students, they continuously receive support, guidance and feedback from experts in the field.

All in all, the student session is proving itself as a very valuable addition to ESSLLI _ The ever increasing number of submissions, coming from all over the world, definitely shows that there is an interest in a forum like this.

Evening lectures are given by distinguished scholars, and address the general ESSLLI public. More and more satellite events are being organized during and around ESSLLI summer schools. Since ESSLLI'95 in Barcelona, a Formal Grammar conference is organized the weekend preceding the summer school. It provides a forum for the presentation of new and original research on formal grammar, especially with regard to the application of formal methods to natural language analysis.

This year's conference will have a modular architecture. It will feature a special session on nite-state methods as they pertain to formal grammar, and a panel on "Formal Grammar and the Curriculum". The panel should create the basis for the development of an archive of educational material related to formal grammar such as course notes, assignments, software and demos. It will also host a Symposium Session, co-sponsored by CologNet and ESLNET, on "Combining logical and data-oriented approaches in NLP".

The Summer School is increasingly being used as a stepping stone for publications: several special JoLLI issues based on workshops held during previous summer schools have appeared, or are about to, and a number of titles in the SiLLI book series are based on workshops and courses held during previous Summer schools. Summer School lecturers and workshop organizers are encouraged to contact members of the editorial boards of JoLLI and SiLLI to discuss publication plans.

Applications to host the summer school must be sent to FoLLI's Standing Committee for the Summer School that decides on locations, appoints the program committees and organizing committees, and discusses matters of policy regarding the summer schools.

The ``International Masters Programme in Computational Logic'' at the Department of Computer Science at the Technische Universität Dresden, established in 1997, is booming. Every year 50 students with Bachelor degree can be accepted for the two years programme. Now, short time before the application deadline for the next academical year, there are already more then 500 applications. In the past years the majority of students came from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. This year the number of interested students coming from India is about 70%. Furthermore, students from Pakistan, Bangladesh and China form another
large part of the applicants.

• There seem to be several reasons for this increase in interest:
• The course is well-known and well established after 5 years.
• A lot of advertising has been made by the German Academic Exchange Service, who provided the initial funding for this Masters Programme, for such international study programmes in Germany.
• Finally, the best advertising are the alumni. Most of them are now pursuing a PhD at renowned universities or found interesting jobs in companies. These
  examples exert a wide influence on other students.

The shadowy side of this high wave of interest is much overwork for our administrative staff as well as for the evaluation committee in processing the applications. Another difficult issue is the wide qualitative bandwidth in the worldwide university landscape. This bandwidth is so serious that the level of knowledge and the scores of the applicants are difficult to compare to each other. Therefore, it is very complicated to make an optimal selection of the best. In the long run there seems to be no way around entrance examinations which should not be inappropriate for an elite study programme.

In order to get all students on the same starting level, so-called bridging-courses are already under development, where the students get a chance to refresh the knowledge indispensable for starting to study in the Masters Programme.

For further information please contact Mrs. Mariana Stantcheva, Phone: +49 351 463-39239 ; Email: Mariana.Stantcheva@inf.tu-dresden.de