The Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence "Mihai Drăgănescu" has been established in 1994 to be a competence center, an active actor of knowledge dissemination. It has a core of permanent staff (22 researchers, 3 of them Members of the Romanian Academy; 5 associated members from abroad) and a variable number of temporary (contract-based) collaborators, mainly MS or PhD students. The Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence "Mihai Drăgănescu" is member of the European Network of Excellence in Human Language Technologies. Each year, since its foundation, it was rated highest (“Excellency institution”) within the Romanian Academy yearly evaluation procedure. In 2001 it won the competition for Centers of Excellency (in Information Science and Technology) organized by the Ministry of Education and Science. In 2002 it was rated as the best research institute of the Romanian Academy (from 60 institutes and centers). The main research projects of the Institute are in the areas of natural language processing, machine learning and knowledge acquisition, computer-aided instruction and structural-phenomenological modelling. The activities of the Institute also include know-how dissemination, education in artificial intelligence, and organization of national and international conferences, summer schools, and seminars. The Institute has several cooperation relations with Universities, research institutions and industrial partners from more than 20 countries from Europe and USA.