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IARIGAI established 43 years ago

Thursday 13. November 2008 - The International Association of Research Organizations for the Information, Media and Graphic Arts Industries (iarigai) - with more than 40 years of history - developed in an inevitable and influential factor in the international research community for a wide scope of related fields.

This was the subject of a press conference that was held on 29 October 2008 on the outskirts of IFRA Expo in Amsterdam. President of iarigai, Ms. Helene Juhola, accompanied by Mr. Manfred Werfel, vice president and Dr. Mladen Lovrecek, Secretary general, explained the mission of the Association, presented its recent development and disclosed future goals and actions.
The Association was established 43 years ago, in 1965, and since then had an informal status, as a community of interest. However, its expansion and increasing influence, as well as overall progress, required a formal resolution. Therefore, since April this year, iarigai is formally registered as a non-profit research association, with the legal office in Darmstadt, Germany, kindly hosted by one of its members, IFRA.
iarigai is today a powerfull alliance of 51 members from 21 countries throughout the world – research institutes, academic organiaztions and industrial research, all of them working on advanced scientific and technological development. The number of members considerabely increased since 2004, when iarigai has begun its transformation.
Each year in September another member is hosting the International research conference, high-profile events, that are drawing more and more attention of the international research community. Contributions for iarigai conferences are carefully selected by the Program committee following a double-blind review process. This year, the 35th conference was organized by AIDO – technological institute for color, optics and imaging, in Valencia, Spain. It was considered by all participants as one of the most succesful events in the history of iarigai.
Conferences are regularly followed by a book with edited full papers presented at the conference. This series – Advances in Printing and Media Technology – contains the most recents results of scientific and technical research, and is a valuable source of information, proving that the fontiers of knowledge are definitely advancing. Very soon iarigai will announce establishing of additional publishing channels for its members and, as well as for researchers throughout the world of science.
Ms. Juhola took the opportunity to announce the next International research conference of iarigai, scheduled for September 2009 in Stockholm, Sweden, to be hosted by STFI-Packforsk. It will be followed by the 37th conference in Toronto, Canada in 2010 at the Ryerson University.
Meeting the needs of its members, iarigai recently introduced a new feature – Strategic networking meeting, where members will discuss essential issues for the Association and overall research and development as well. The first in a series of scheduled meetings was held earlier this year in Dreieich (Frankfurt) and resulted in a consortium that will, with the support of EU Commission, explore the possibilities of establishing the Print European Research Network (PREN). The following Strategic networking meeting – planned for April 2009 will be most probably focused on environmental issues.
The presentation was followed by a discussion, mostly focused on the relation of printed and new media.