On July 14, 2006 the Institute of Physics in Belgrade (IPB) and its Scientific Computing Laboratory were hosts to high level delegations from EU Directorate General for Research, headed by Janez Potocnik, Commissioner for Research, and from the Ministry of Science of Serbia, headed by Aleksandar Popovic, Minister of Science. The joint delegation also included Andras Siegler, Director INCO, Giancarlo Caratti, JRC, Tania Friederichs, DG Research, Ivan Videnovic, Assistant Minister of Science, and Gradimir Milovanovic, Chairman of the National Science Council.

The main purpose of the Commissioner’s visit to the IPB was to get first hand information about the four IPB laboratories that were awarded three year EU Centre of Excellence grants that started on July 1, 2006. The results of the 2005 SSA call for reinforcing of research excellence in the West Balkans were a success for Serbia whose R&D centre’s got 8 of the region’s 10 grants; for Serbian physics (6 grants); and, most impressively for the Institute of Physics in Belgrade whose high quality research was recognized with the awarding of EU Centre of Excellence grants to 4 of its laboratories. The success of IPB was further enhanced by the fact that the CX-CMCS project of its Scientific Computing Laboratory (SCL) was the best evaluated R&D proposal in the whole West Balkan region.

At the Scientific Computing Laboratory Commissioner Potocnik was greeted by Aleksandar Belic, head of SCL, and given a brief overview of the laboratory’s mission and R&D activity. In particular, the Commissioner for Research was informed about SCL’s three year project for reinforcing SCL research capacity transforming it into an EU Centre of Excellence for the Computer modelling of complex systems and Grid technologies. Commissioner Potocnik was particularly interested to learn about SCL’s participation in EU e-Infrastructure projects: EGEE-II, SEE-GRID, and SEE-GRID 2. During the tour of SCL the joint delegation had a chance to view the lab’s computing infrastructure, particularly its PARADOX parallel cluster – one of the central GRID resources in the SEE region.