Information Technologies Step into New Scientific Areas

The Faculty of Information Technologies of the Latvia University of Agriculture was founded in 2001 by uniting the Department of Physics, the Department of Mathematics, and the newly established Department of Computer Systems and Department of Control Systems. The main directions of scientific activities at the Faculty are: 1) application of information technologies in forestry (leading researcher - I. Arhipova); 2) heat and mass transfer (leading researcher - U. Thins); 3) computer control systems (leading researcher - E. Stalidzans); 4) bioinformatics (leading researcher - L. Paura); 5) systems and synthetic biology (leading researcher - E. Stalidzans); 6) pedagogics (leading researcher - A. Zeidmane); 7) modern elementary mathematics and didactics of mathematics (leading researcher - L. Ramane); and 8) educational management (leading researcher - A. Vintere). In 2008, the Laboratory of Computer Control of Bioprocesses was established and equipped with computational servers, laboratory bioreactor, and sets of Programmable Logical Controler (PLC) based micro automatics. The Faculty of Information Technologies organizes biannual international conferences. The first and the second conference took place in the years 2004 and 2006 under the title "Information and communication technologies for rural development". The title of the conference has been "Applied information and communication technologies" since 2008. Participation in European scientific projects is the main future objective to use advantages of the European research area and to implement recent scientific achievements of the European Community.