The Interfaces Institute was founded in 1992. Since that time it was involved in the following - smaller and bigger - projects:
The Institute organized and ran the international Nordic-Baltic economic integration workshop in Sopot by Gdañsk in 1994, after which it published, yet in 1994, the book Nordic-Baltic Europe is Restructuring: Looking for the Integration Fits, edited by Jan W. Owsiñski and Henryk Æwikliñski (from the University of Gdañsk), 320 pages. Then, the Institute organized and ran the subsequent workshop in Klaipeda, Lithuania, in 1996. From this meeting, the book was published in 1997: Nordic-Baltic Europe: Integration Risks, Barriers and Opportunities, edited by Jan W. Owsiñski and Andrzej Stêpniak (again from the University of Gdañsk), 360 pages. The next meeting will take place in Estonia in 1998, and The Interfaces Institute will be a co-organizer of this event. The past meetings were organized primarily with collaboration from the Swedish Institute of Regional and Urban Studies (SIR), the Nordic Section of the Regional Science Association, and the University of Gdañsk.
The Institute cooperates closely with the international research group "MODEST": MODelling of Economies and Societies in Transition. This group is associated with the Polish Operational and System Research Society, has an official affiliation of the EURO chapter of IFORS, the International Federation of Operation Research Societies, and of IFAC, the International Federation of Automatic Control. The group exists since 1994. The Institute organized and ran two annual meetings of MODEST (1995 in M¹dralin and 1996 in Jab³onna). The book from the first meeting was published in 1996 by the Institute, edited by Jan W. Owsiñski and Zbigniew Nahorski: Modelling and Analysing Economies in Transition, 327 pages. The volume from the second meeting is under preparation. The third meeting of MODEST took place in Warsaw in June 1997, while the fourth is planned in UK in 1998.
In the same area the Institute cooperated with the team developing the macroeconomic model of Polish transition processes, financed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research and the Polish Committee for Scientific Research. The team was led by Peter Fleissner from Vienna University of Technology and consisted of Polish specialists, members of the Polish Operation and System Research Society.
In 1995 the Polish-U.S. Fulbright Commission and the Polish Fulbright Alumni Association organized the international conference on Education for Transition to Market Economy in Countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Some 200 distinguished personalities participated, with many representatives of the administration and business community. The staff of the Interfaces Institute were responsible for the proceedings from this conference, including detailed reports from discussions. This resulted in the publication of the book under the same title as the Conference.
In Spring 1996 The Interfaces Institute were asked to organize a series of lectures and meetings for a group of academic teachers and students from Western Europe, US and Canada, with the aim of promoting knowledge on the transformation processes in the post-communist countries. The study tour involved a number of meetings with the representatives of the scholarly community and of the banking sector (e.g. lectures at the PKO SA and the Polish Development Bank), as well as visits at the most interesting foci of development.
The ecological/environmental stream of activities of The Interfaces Institute is best illustrated by the organization (with Andrzej Ka³uszko at the lead) in Autumn 1996 of the international seminar in Warsaw devoted to the theme mentioned. This meeting was run in collaboration with the Royal Swedish Academy, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the University of Surrey and the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In the same domain of activity Jan W. Owsiñski was invited to deliver the plenary lecture, devoted to ecological/economic modelling issues, at the Baltic Environmental Resource Management conference in Nykoping in 1995.
Since the beginning of 1996 The Interfaces Institute cooperates with the Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), office in Warsaw, on matters related to the development of the self-governmental institutionalization in Poland, with special emphasis on the financial aspects and the computerized information infrastructure. A member of staff and an associate of the Institute are currently employed on the projects carried out by the DAI in collaboration with respective Polish partners (e.g. Ministry of Finance and Municipal Development Agency). A special small study was performed on identification of the set of representative communes in Poland with the original flexible algorithms developed by the staff of the Institute.
At the end of 1996 The Interfaces Institute carried out the evaluation of the effectiveness and adequacy of the support given by the National Association of Home Builders - Research Center from the US to the development of the Polish Association of Home Builders. This project involved not only the assessment of the respective organizational and managerial activities, but also their embedding in the realities of Polish home building industry and its market.
In late Spring 1997 The Institute carried out the evaluation of the work and perspectives of a Polish body active in the area of permanent education catering primarily to the developing small and medium private business community. The evaluation involved also a mini study of the market in this domain.
In Summer 1996 The Interfaces Institute developed a package of the specialized (non-differentiable) computer optimization procedures for the large French electric power generation and distribution company Electricit* de France. This set of procedures is in fact at the cutting edge of the existing know-how in non-differentiable optimization.
Throughout 1996, and then again in 1997, The Interfaces Institute was involved in the work on the project concerning the European science and technology transfer network, primarily in the preparation of the multimedia computer network tutorial, with a CD ROM version, the off-line version of the web-based information centers, and the databases describing the potential of Polish information technology industry. The primary partners in this work were: the German Institut fur Informatik in Entwurf, Plannung und Fertigung zu Berlin GmbH, and the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
In the second half of 1996 The Interfaces Institute was involved in the design and implementation of a software interface to be used for a computer-based automatic control system, as commissioned by the Industrial Institute of Automation and Measurement (PIAP) in Warsaw.
The above outline of the projects carried out does not account for the on-going small activities, related, in particular, to various publication-related services.