"The Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers (A&C) at the University ""Politehnica"" of Bucharest is already well known as both a national and regional centre of excellence in Intelligent Information Technologies.The main goal of the ERRIC project is to empower A&C existing excellence in research by unlocking its significant research potential and enhancing its national and regional leadership position in selected areas of Intelligent Information Technologies: agreement technologies, semantic and collaborative technologies for the web, advanced grid technologies, large scale distributed system services, and adaptive intelligent control. Throughout this project, fostering high quality research in these areas of A&C expertise will lead to a comprehensive and sustainable integration of A&C into the wider European Research Area context.Based on our SWOT analysis of existing competence and experience, the project Action Plan includes:- Strengthening our research and technological innovation capacities by supporting and mobilizing existing human resources, recruitment of experienced researchers, and expansion of the research infrastructure;- Establish an ambitious research agenda to significantly develop our research potential in the identified strategic areas and bring A&C research activity to the highest European level;- Leverage existing relationships with 11 well established European research entities in 5 EU countries to achieve two-way secondments for exchanging know-how and experience, develop strategic partnerships, and dramatically widen A&C existing research network;- Organize high quality scientific events focused on knowledge sharing and network building, to raise international awareness of A&C research capacity;- Enhance the dynamic research environment and collaborative links with leading IT companies to support wider socio-economic impact through exploitation of research results and user-driven innovation;- Promote A&C research excellence and disseminate the project results to maximise visibility at regional, European and international level."