The event was indeed setup like a conference, even forcing the Ph.D. students to talk in English, something Hungarians students are not used to as much as their Dutch counterparts. The head of the SZTAKI was chairing and the vast majority of the researchers---including the professors---gave acte de présence during one or more sessions. Moreover in each category of first, second, third, or fourth year Ph.D. students there was a prize for the best (presented) results.
Back in Leiden Maurice became a Ph.D. student himself in the Department of Computer Science---there was no LIACS yet---of Leiden University. He soon realized that nothing of the kind of event he attended in Budapest was organized here, while in Budapest his impression had been that such an event was probably organized everywhere. It seemed important for increasing awareness of the research activities within one's institute, for allowing Ph.D. students to practice their skill in presenting their work, and for offering anyone interested a view of the current research undertaken within one's institute. The idea of organizing such an event within LIACS---without the competition---slowly grew inside him, but it was not until he met Jano that the idea really matured.
This maturation came in 1998 during the break of a lecture within the IPA course on Algorithmics and Complexity. Maurice and Jano had a chat about their research and they wondered about the research activities of the rest of the Ph.D. students within LIACS. Jano said he had been walking around with the idea to organize some kind of conference during which the Ph.D. students of LIACS presented their current research. Both happy to have found someone else with the same idea they agreed to truly start organizing this in 1999.
The result is the Internal AIO Conference on 14 and 15 December 1999. Over twenty Ph.D. students of LIACS will give the attendants a flavour of their current research. The heads of the groups will chair the sessions and we hope the majority of LIACS' research staff will attend most of the sessions. This report you are reading right now is a proof of the varied research done within LIACS. We hope you will be happy with the result and we hope the IAC will turn into a regular LIACS event.
Finally we would like to thank the LIACS management team for their enthousiastic support from the very beginning, and of course for their financial support. Furthermore we would like to thank many of our colleagues for useful discussions on matters regarding the organizations and in particular those participating for doing so.
Enjoy the conference,
Jano and Maurice