The Department of Computing at Imperial College has received a 5* rating (the highest possible) in the most recent 2001 and the 1996 Research Assessment Exercises by the UK Government. It has been a leading international centre for research in artificial intelligence and computational logic since 1975, and, more recently, on argumentation, logic-based agents, negotiation and social welfare.

In recent years, this research has been supported by the UK-funded EPSRC research grant on "Logic-based Multi-agent Systems" (1997-2000) and the EC-funded STREP project SOCS (2002-2005), on "A computational logic model for the description, analysis and verification of global and open societies of heterogeneous computees".

The Department of Computing also hosts the e-Science Centre, providing access to various high performance computing resources, and a partner on numerous e-Science projects, including, of direct relevance to ARGUGRID, the Discovery Net e-Science Pilot Project, which has developed a service-based computing infrastructure currently being used by research scientists worldwide to conduct complex scientific data analysis in three important research areas: Life Sciences, Geo-hazard Modelling, and Environmental Modelling.

The Computer Science Department is rated in the top ten in the UK and is internationally recognised for the excellence of its research. It scored 5 in the recent Research Assessment Exercises by the UK Government. The Department is a world leader in Machine Learning, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Theory of Computing, and recently, Cognitive and Autonomous Agents, Artificial Agent Societies, Agent Communication, and Programmable Agents, based on the agent platform PROSOCS, developed within by the EC-funded STREP project SOCS.

The Dipartimento di Informatica of the University of Pisa is the first established Department of Computer Science in Italy, funded in 1969. Its research covers all main areas in computer science.

The Logic Programming and Computational Logic groups have more than two decades of history of research in the field of declarative languages and their exploitation in AI applications. The groups participated in several national and international projects. Among others, these groups have achieved results in the areas of computational logic and reasoning techniques, theory composition operators, modular logic programming, meta/abductive and non-monotonic reasoning, coordination languages, and computational logic-based agents, as developed within the EC-funded STREP project SOCS, of which these groups were members.

The Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) is a private law body associated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DECE) of the National Technical University of Athens. It has been established in 1989 by the Ministry of Education in order to carry out the research and development activities in the fields of telecommunications systems and techniques and computer systems. The laboratories of ICCS/DECE are supported by the implementation of several structural programs, public investment and special development programs of the Ministry of Education. Within ICCS, the Network Management & Optimal Design (NETMODE [ www.netmode.ntua.gr ] ) Laboratory is actively involved in Research and Development programs sponsored by Hellenic and European organisations. The NETMODE research interests and areas of expertise focus on communication networking with emphasis on management, planning, and design of distributed data networks, and in particular in Grid computing and applications, Peer-to-Peer and overlay networks, distributed and hierarchical management architectures, software architectures (middleware, mobile code) for network management, computer network and information systems security, integrated network and systems management, management of e-health systems, management of e-business systems, management of new generation networks, quality of service provisioning, resource allocation in mobile ad-hoc and sensor networks.

AIT originated in 1959 to help meet the growing need for advanced engineering education in Asia. In November 1967, under its present name, the Institute became an autonomous international institution empowered to award degrees and diplomas. Presently AIT offers advanced education in engineering, science, planning and management. The Institute is supported by Asian and non-Asian donor governments, international agencies, foundations, business organisations and individuals. This support acknowledges AIT’s successful academic endeavour, recognised in several international awards.

The School of Engineering and Technologies is active in the areas of artificial intelligence, software engineering, computer graphics, networking, logic programming and knowledge representation, multimedia, information systems, amongst others. In particular, argumentation theory is an active research area in the school.

InforSense is a leading provider of integrative analytics and workflow technology. With more than 60 employees, the company has a strong research base and has its roots in the Department of Computing, Imperial College London. It was founded in 1999 to commercialise ground breaking research work in the group of the InforSense CEO Professor Yike Guo at Imperial College London. InforSense’s workflow technology is the basis for the EC-funded projects SIMDAT and TOPCOMBI. Furthermore, InforSense has an extremely successful track record in collaboration with its existing customers who have licensed its technology, including five of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, 3 Fortune 100 financial companies, and world leading research institutes including the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the US. InforSense’s workflow technology was the winner of the IEEE high-performance computing challenge in 1998, 1999 and 2002, and thus the company is ideally qualified to defining workflow in the ARGUGRID Grid environment.

GMV S.A. (GMV) is a Spanish, privately owned company, integrated within the industrial group Grupo Tecnológico e Industrial GMV S.A and devoted to engineering, software development and turn-key systems integration for the aerospace and defence sectors. It delivers innovative solutions to a variety of national and international customers in its two target markets, Space and Defence, which have been developed in a large number of operational and research projects.

GMV is one of the leading suppliers of Data Processing systems in Europe. GMV’s activities include a large number of projects within the EC programs and GMES in particular. Furthermore, GMV has contributed to the development of the SAF (Satellite Application Facilities) libraries (contracted by INM-EUMETSAT).

GMV has been evaluating the use of Grid techniques in order to apply them in the GDAAS project (GAIA data access and analysis study). This project requires a high CPU throughput since it has to process 100 million observations in order to create a map of the galaxy. Then the use of multiple CPUs is one of the requirements to achieve the expected results. Although GDAAS already distributes the work on several computers, the Grid can provide a more flexible way to extend such distribution to any kind of machine. As a part of this activity, GMV is working with the Spanish company GRIDSYSTEMS, using the InnerGRID tool and verifying if this solution fits into the GDAAS framework. GMV takes part in Spanish activities on Grid led by academic institutions as the Complutense University and scientific centres as the Centre of Astrobiology.

cosmoONE Hellas MarketSite A.E. is the leading Greek e-business enabler. The company provides solutions and services for B2B electronic commerce with the formation of Electronic Marketplaces (e-marketplaces) and through applications, such as Electronic Procurement (e-procurement) and Electronic Auctions (e-auctions).

The company was founded in June 2000 as a joint venture between OTE Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation (30,87%), COSMOTE Mobile Telecom (30,87%), ALPHA BANK (15%), Dienekis Informatics (13,18%) and NATIONAL BANK OF GREECE (10,08%).
It began its commercial activity in January 2001 and today the company's list of clients includes important businesses and major players in the sector of services, industry, information technology and commerce, which carry out complete electronic transactions via the applications provided by cosmoONE.

With the use of the provided services and the utilisation of the applications provided by cosmoONE, both business-Buyers and business-Suppliers, substantially limit their direct and indirect expenses, which result from the traditional methods of placing and monitoring an order. Furthermore, the relations between their current and future trading partners are improved and they also have at their disposal the best procedures and the most complete information for the processing of the transactions which take place in real-time, without any geographical boundaries.

cosmoONE's strategic goal is the provision of all necessary infrastructures and services in order to render electronic commerce accessible to all businesses through simple procedures, irrespective of their size and sector. Within this context, cosmoONE has already established and operates several private electronic marketplaces for the procurement needs of major players in the Telecommunications, Banking, Internet and Manufacturing sectors. Furthermore, the venture provides the capability of electronic auctions, while its near future plans include the creation of vertical markets (addressing specific business sectors) and value added services, such as EBPP (Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment) as well as Sourcing and Trade Networking services.

Since January 1st 2001, when the marketplace became operational, more than 1 billion € has been transacted through the procurement service and more than 1000 auctions have been realized with a total value of more than 200 million €, whereas more than 6.500 companies participated as bidders (April '06 data).