|
The Information and Communications Technology (the ICT) Cluster
is one of the three pillars of the Ontario Research Network in Electronic
Commerce (ORNEC). Together with the Law Cluster and the Business
Cluster, we were the original developers of the ORNEC concept.
The mandate of the Cluster is to conduct research in those
aspects of Information and Communications technology that are relevant to
the practice of electronic commerce (e-commerce). We feel very strongly
that e-commerce is an inter-disciplinary activity, and therefore all research
addressing its problems must be carried out jointly by three underlying disciplines:
ICT, Law, and Business. To meaningfully address issues such as trust, efficiency,
public and business acceptability, the three fields must come together to
offer meaningful, productive and scaleable solutions, taking into account
the business and legal context in which these solutions will operate. The
brief recent history of music on the Internet, from Napster to P2P, and from
Kazaa to iTunes, is an excellent example of such a tri-partite evolution
of e-commerce.
We conduct our research by means of a number of specific projects,
described in this website. Our projects represent leading-edge research in
selected aspects of computer security, multimedia, wireless communications,
intelligent agents, electronic contracts, and privacy-enhancing technologies,
which are relevant to e-commerce. All of our projects include researchers
from the ICT Cluster and from at least one other ORNEC Cluster, and in some
cases from another university.
The existing projects went through a rigorous peer-review process
carried out by the ICT Cluster Scientific Board. The criteria for
selection included relevance to e-commerce, quality of the research,
quality of the applicants, inter-disciplinarity, and training of
highly qualified personnel. The second cycle of projects, with some
exciting new topics, will start in the Fall of 2005.
We are grateful to the great efforts and contributions made by
ORNEC's creators and contributors and particularly to Dr. Stan Matwin
the former ICT cluster leader.
|
