I am professor Joseph Sifakis, Emeritus Research Director at Verimag lab, in Grenoble France. I am the founder of this laboratory, a leading laboratory in the area of safety critical systems that he directed for 13 years. I also have been a full professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) for the period 2011-2016. In 2007, I received the Turing Award, for his contribution to the theory and application of model checking, the most widely used system verification technique.

I visited Shenzhen for the first time in July 2018 and I was impressed by the strong industrial presence of main ICT Chinese companies. I believe that the city has the potential to become one of the world hubs of the industries driving the revolution driven by AI for intelligent and autonomous systems as envisioned by the IIoT with applications.Since this visit, I have maintained tight collaborations with SUSTech.

Since my first visit to SUSTech, I have been impressed by the richness of this university in terms of staff, international visibility and excellent coverage of areas essential to the development of autonomous and intelligent systems such as autonomous driving systems, intelligent medical systems, trustworthy intelligent systems, the smart city and the foundations of AI. So, I was delighted to accept the initial offer to be a Distinguished Visiting Professor at SUSTech. I am convinced that the industrial application of AI requires technological solutions and standards that a country like China, with its strong and broad industrial base, is capable of developing.

These ideas explain my vision for the development of RITAS, which I presented to SUSTech management in November 2019. I thought SUSTech could create RITAS to coordinate an initiative at the forefront of the industrial application of AI and autonomous systems, and contribute to the creation of an ecosystem in Shenzhen with national and even international influence. This led to the creation of RITAS.

My opinion of RITAS' research is mostly positive.I am convinced that, by the end of this five-year period, RITAS will have developed its full potential and succeeded in delivering the promised results, thanks to stronger leadership and more targeted support for the centers, based on stricter evaluation criteria.