Swedish Institute of Computer Science

The Swedish Institute of Computer Science, SICS, is an independent non-profit research organization with a research focus on applied computer science. The institute carries out research in a number of areas, including networked embedded systems, future Internet technologies, large scale network-based applications, and human-machine interaction. Research projects at SICS are typically carried out in cooperation with both industry and academia.

In January 2005 SICS had approximately 88 employees, of which 77 are researchers and 30 have PhD degrees. The institute is located in the Kista district of Stockholm.

oftware

A number of well-known software packages have been developed at SICS:

*Contiki, an operating system for memory constrained embedded devices
*Delegent, an authorization server
*Distributed Interactive Virtual Environment or DIVE in short
*lwIP, a TCP/IP stack for embedded systems
*Mozart, a multi-platform programming system
*Nemesis, a concept exokernel operating system
*Protothreads, light-weight stackless threads
*Quintus Prolog, a Prolog implementation
*SICStus Prolog, a Prolog implementation
*Simics, a full-system simulator originally developed at SICS
*uIP, a TCP/IP stack for embedded systems

Academic output

The research at SICS results in approximately 100 refereed publications in academic journals, conferences and workshops per year. Around 2-4 SICS researchers receive higher academic degrees per year, and 1-3 persons move to academia for tenured positions.

SICS was ranked as the 15th most acknowledged computer science research institution in the world in an article in December 2004 issue of the highly esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). SICS is the only Swedish institution included in the list, and is one of two European institutions alongside 13 well-known American institutions – several of them ten times bigger than SICS.

Notable spin-off companies

* Axiomatics
* Dynarc
* Effnet
* Virtutech
* Tacton Systems

Funding

SICS is jointly owned by Swedish industry and the Swedish government. The industry owners are TeliaSonera, Ericsson, FMV (the Swedish Defense Material Administration), Green Cargo, ABB, and Bombardier Transportation.

SICS research is funded by the owners, by national funding sources, often Vinnova (the Swedish Government Agency for Innovation Systems) and SSF (the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research), and by industrial collaboration partners. SICS also participates in several European research projects funded by the European Commission.

History

SICS was formed in 1985.

External links

* [http://www.sics.se/ SICS homepage]
* C. Lee Giles and Isaac G. Councill: [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0407743101v1 Who gets acknowledged: Measuring scientific contributions through automatic acknowledgement indexing] . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dec. 21, 2004.