CAUL

The Centro de Álgebra da Universidade de Lisboa, CAUL, had its origin as a research center in the project LM4 of the Instituto da Alta Cultura and was officially recognized by the Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica, INIC, in 1980. It became a research unit of the Universidade de Lisboa in 1993, being financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT.

CAUL has more than 20 integrated members and several PhD students, collaborators and grant holders. Most of its members hold a teaching position in one of the following Universities:

CAUL maintains close cooperation with foreign researchers, namely from Australia, France, Great-Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain and the United States, which is reflected by the joint publication of research papers, co-supervision of doctoral students and organization of scientific meetings. CAUL cooperates also with CIRCA (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Computational Algebra – Univ. St. Andrews, Reino Unido) aiming at, on one hand, reinforcing the existing scientific interchange, sharing preprints, foreign visitors and video-conference seminars; on the other hand, collaborate in the development of GAP (Groups, Algorithms and Programming). CAUL has regular cooperation with several national institutions, namely in the supervision of theses.

CAUL is divided in 3 different projects: Algebras, Modules and Rings; Lattices, Universal Algebra and Algebraic Logic; Semigroups, Automata and Languages. The executive bodies of CAUL are the Coordinator, the Executive Committee, the Coordinator Committee and the Scientific Council. The Coordinator represents CAUL and coordinates the scientific activities between the Areas; presides over the Scientific Council and over the Executive Committee and the Coordinator Committee; prepares the reports and the plans of activities and runs the budget. The Executive Committee is chosen by the Coordinator and has at most five members. The Scientific Council consists of all members who hold a doctoral degree. It elects the Coordinator biannually; creates and terminates Areas; approves reports and plans of activities; establishes the scientific aims of CAUL; evaluates the scientific work of the Areas; admits and excludes members and advises the Coordinator in all matters. Most of the tasks of the Scientific Council can be delegated to the Coordinator Committee, which is composed of the Coordinator, the Executive Committee and the Area Leaders.

Current Executive Committee: Gracinda M. S. Gomes (Coordinator), Vítor Hugo Fernandes, Maria João Gouveia, António Malheiro, Catarina Santa-Clara.

Project leaders: Teresa Monteiro Fernandes (Algebras, Modules and Rings), Maria João Gouveia (Lattices, Universal Algebra and Algebraic Logic), Gracinda M. S. Gomes (Semigroups, Automata and Languages).

Advisory Board: Steve Linton (University of St. Andrews, UK), Daniele Mundici (University of Florence, Italy), Jean-Eric Pin (University of Paris 7 Denis Diderot, France), Claude Sabbah (Ecole Polytechnique, France).