Project leader: Tarmo Uustalu, phone +372 620 4250
http://cs.ioc.ee/excs/

Project administrator: Tiina Laasma, phone +372 620 4226

EXCS (Estonian eXcellence in Computer Science) was a centre of excellence in research 2008-2015 funded by the European Regional Development Fund within the Measure for the development of CoEs of the Operational programme for the development of the economic environment of the Estonian system for implementation of the EU Structural Funds 2007-2013.

The general objective of EXCS was to consolidate and advance the Estonian computer science in six areas of recognized strength:

• programming language and systems
• information security and cryptology
• software engineering
• scientific and engineering computing
• bioinformatics
• human language technology.

The specific objectives were to boost the research potential of the groups involved by facilitating collaboration and safeguarding their sustainability and growth, and to increase the impact of their research results in academia, industry and society as well as to popularize them.

EXCS united researchers from the Institute of Cybernetics, Cybernetica AS and the Department of Computer Science of the University of Tartu.

It was coordinated by the Institute of Cybernetics.

EXCS built on the experience of the Centre for Dependable Computing, CDC, one of the ten Ministry of Education and Research funded national centres of excellence 2002-2007, which was also coordinated by IoC.

Besides EXCS, CDC led to another CoE 2008-2015, the Centre for Integrated Electronic Systems and Biomedical Engineering, CEBE. CEBE was a joint project of the Department of Computer Engineering, Electronics and the Technomedicum of the Tallinn University of Technology.

In 2016-2023, EXCS and CEBE will be continued by the Excellence in IT in Estonia, EXCITE, project of the centres of excellence measure of structural assistance 2014-2020. Our human language technology researchers will continue in the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies, CEES, project.