The paper entitled "Programming Smart Object Federations for Simulating and Implementing Ambient Intelligence Scenarios", presented by Ioannis Georgalis, PhD Candidate at the University of Crete and member of the HCI Laboratory of ICS-FORTH, received the Best Student Paper Award at the 3rd International Conference on Pervasive and Embedded Computing and Communications Systems (PECCS 2013, Barcelona, Spain 19-21 February 2013).

The Board of Trustees of the SVS Trust Fund selected MICHAEL S. STRANO, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, for the Recipient of the Stratis V. Sotirchos Lectureship.

Dr. Panayiota Poirazi, Principal Researcher of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB / FORTH) has become a member of AcademiaNet after nomination by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

A USA-Greece collaboration of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory & Iowa State University and at the University of Crete & the Foundation for Research & Technology - Hellas (FORTH) in Greece have found a new way to create small magnets by using short laser light pulses. In this way, they were able to switch magnetism at least 1000 times faster than in current magnetic devices. Magnetic switching is used to encode information in hard drives, magnetic memories, and other computing devices. The discovery reported in the April 4 issue of Nature opens the door to terahertz (1012 hertz) memory speeds and moves magnetic switching to the fast lane.

The call has now opened for the 23rd Award for Excellence in Academic Teaching in memory of Vassilis Xanthopoulos and Stephanos Pnevmatikos, both professors at the University of Crete and members of the Foundation for Research & Technology (FORTH).

Three proposals of FORTH were shortlisted in the 2nd round of the "Greece Innovates" Applied Research and Innovation Competition, which is jointly sponsored by SEV Hellenic Federation of Enterpises and Eurobank member of NBG Group.

In the context of the 38th meeting of the European Network of Computer Emergency Response Teams, which was held in Lisbon, Portugal on 28-30 January 2013, the Computer Emergency Response Team of FORTH (FORTHcert) was awarded the TERENA Trusted Introducer certification.

The European Commission has chosen Graphene as one of Europe’s first 10-year, 1,000 million euro FET flagships. The mission of Graphene is to take graphene and related layered materials from academic laboratories to society, revolutionize multiple industries and create economic growth and new jobs in Europe.