Norwegian Computing Center

Informatikkbygningen

Norwegian Computing Center (NR, in Norwegian: Norsk Regnesentral) is a private, independent, non-profit research foundation founded in 1952. NR carries out contract research and development in the areas of computing and quantitative methods for a broad range of industrial, commercial and public service organisations in the national and international markets. NR has its offices near the university campus Blindern in Oslo, Norway, as part of what is known as Forskningsparken, Park of Research.

NR has three scientific departments:

NR's Department of Applied Research in Information Technology (DART) offers project-oriented applied research within multimedia, information security, information privacy and risks, universal design, and e-inclusion. In addition to research, DART's work covers concept studies, analysis, consultancy, prototyping, training, development, and evaluation.

NR's Statistical Analysis, Image Analysis, and Pattern Recognition (SAMBA) offers project-oriented applied research in all areas of mathematical statistics. The main application areas are Statistics for Climate, Environment, Marine Resources and Health, Statistics for Finance, Insurance and Commodity Markets, Statistics for Technology, Industry and Administration, Earth Observation, and Image Analysis and Pattern Recognition.

NR's Statistical Analysis of Natural Resource Data (SAND) offers project-oriented applied research statistics related to the oil industry. The group is a significant international contributor to research and services within reservoir description, stochastic modeling and geostatistics for the oil industry. The primary goal is to use statistical methods to reduce and quantify risk and uncertainty. The main area is stochastic modeling of the geology in petroleum reservoirs including upscaling and history matching. There is also a significant activity on all kinds of risk quantification, primarily within the energy sector.

NR is the host for a Centre for research based innovation, Statistics for Innovation with a funding from the Research Council of Norway in the period 2007-2014.

Historic Landmarks

NR was established in 1952. Until 1970 an important part of the activity was to perform mathematical computations for other organizations. After 1970 NR has been a methodological research institute. In 1985, NR became an independent institute and moved to its present location in 1988. NR is famous for inventing the first object oriented programming language Simula in the 1960s. NR has worked with data communication since 1963, the Internet since 1973 and multimedia since1994. NR started working with statistics in 1952, remote sensing in 1982, geostatistics and petroleum in 1983, marine resources in 1988 and electricity prices and finance in 1994. The history of NR is described in a historic book called "Norsk Regnesentral 1952-2002" (in Norwegian) published in 2002.

• The Simula programming language was designed and built by Professor emeritus Ole-Johan Dahl and Professor emeritus Kristen Nygaard at the Norwegian Computing Center (NCC) in Oslo between 1962 and 1967.

Awards

• NR employees Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygraard received the ACM Turing Award in 2001 and the 2002 IEEE John von Neumann Medal for the introduction of the concepts underlying object-oriented programming through the design and implementation of Simula 67.
• November 6, 2008: Chief research scientist Wolfgang Leister and research scientist Truls Fretland, win a best-paper award for their contribution at the conference ICSNC 2008 in Sliema, Malta for their work in the SAMPOS research project.
• Feb. 2010: Research scientist Till Halbach wins a best-paper award for his contribution to the ACHI 2010 conference for his work in the DIADEM, UNIMOD, and KogNett research projects.
• Nov. 2010: Chief research scientist Wolfgang Leister, PhD fellow Svetlana Boudko, and research scientist Till Halbach win a best-paper award for their contribution to the ICSNC 2010 conference for their work in the MOVIS and ADIMUS research projects.

External links

• Norsk Regnesentral / Norwegian Computing Center: http://nr.no/
• Norsk Regnesentral's annual public reports: http://www.nr.no/pages/common/annual_reports
• A Google Earth 3D model of Norsk Regnesentral's building is available at Google SketchUp
• Professor emeritus Kristen Nygaard: http://www.ifi.uio.no/in_memoriam_kristen/
• Professor emeritus Ole-Johan Dahl: http://www.ifi.uio.no/adminfo/tribute.html

Coordinates: 59°56′37.19″N 10°43′2.75″E / 59.9436639°N 10.7174306°E / 59.9436639; 10.7174306