Education and Training
This is the main pillar concentrating on all education and training activities necessary for building and maintaining scientific excellence of the human resource capacity of the KIOS CoE. This pillar involves the following key activities: the new Master of Science (MSc) programme on Intelligent Critical Infrastructure Systems; the Joint PhDs which include Imperial’s Partner Research Institution (PRI) programme and the Split-PhD programme; personnel mobility between UCY and Imperial as well as targeted secondments in the Centre’s collaborators; the personnel learning, training and development programme; and the continuous development of new online courses.
MSc in Intelligent CIS
The main objective of the MSc in Intelligent Critical Infrastructure Systems (CIS) program is to teach highly innovative methods, tools, and technologies for the monitoring, control, management, and security of CIS for a competent workforce that will be recruited by local and regional authorities and international companies seeking to make CIS more reliable, safe, resilient, efficient, and sustainable. In addition, the program is designed to transfer knowledge on the research and innovation challenges faced by modern CIS and cultivate student interest in pursuing a career path in research and innovation. Doing so, it is expected to contribute to the transformation of the research and innovation culture of Cyprus and the Mediterranean-Middle East region. The program is open to students from different technical backgrounds, spanning the different areas of science and engineering.
The program is intended to:
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Provide the theoretical basis for the monitoring, control, management, and security of intelligent critical infrastructure systems, with associated modelling, simulation, and design methods and algorithms. |
Produce graduates equipped to pursue careers that involve design, modelling, analysis, control and optimization, as well as business aspects of critical infrastructure systems. |
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Offer students from a broad engineering and science background the opportunity to acquire ICT knowledge of intelligent critical infrastructure systems. |
Provide a solid background that will enable graduates to further continue their studies towards a PhD degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering on the topic of Intelligent CIS. |
Key Aspects
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Importance of the topic |
Novelty and Uniqueness |
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Multidisciplinarity |
Strong relevance to UCY’s research activities |
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Synergetic collaboration between UCY and Imperial College |
Strong relevance to the industry |
PhD Programme
Candidate students will be able to apply to the PhD programmes provided by either the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Cyprus or the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Imperial College London.
Mobility
The KIOS CoE encourages mobility activities for all its personnel with at least one visit to the partner institution. Furthermore, all KIOS CoE researchers will have secondments to public/private sector organisations and at KIOS Innovation Hub partners. Secondments are an important opportunity for the researchers to receive the training and practical experience they would otherwise not have received, in an industrial setting, thus enhancing their skills by working in a multicultural and multidisciplinary environment while solving real-life problems. Imperial and UCY have already established an agreement for student, faculty, and administrator mobility through the ERASMUS programme.
Personnel Training
There are several activities for the training of KIOS CoE researchers and administrators as well as partner organisation personnel, such as:
- Summer Training Schools: One-week intensive courses that will be organised once per year giving emphasis on a current technical area such as cognitive systems, cyber-physical systems, monitoring and big-data analytics, control and fault-tolerance, cyber-security and computational intelligence. The programme may also include collaborating projects on the KIOS CIS Testbeds, field trips to KIOS Innovation Hub partners, and it will be linked with the annual KIOS CoE workshop, where researchers will present their research work to an industry panel. Dedicated sessions will be organised in collaboration with the KIOS CoE Entrepreneurship Network, as well as for other transferrable skills. The training schools will be open to all KIOS CoE researchers as well as researchers from other organisations, while world renowned experts will be invited to present on various topics.
- Academic Courses: Refers to all academic courses offered by Imperial and UCY, which will be open to all KIOS CoE researchers.
- Entrepreneurship Training: A number of short courses will be provided to all KIOS CoE researchers on entrepreneurship, exploitation of Intellectual Property (IP), IP Rights (IPR), and IPR management, how to start a company, project management, etc. These will be provided by Imperial in collaboration with the KIOS CoE Entrepreneurial Network.
- Personal and Professional Training: A number of short courses on a wide range of personal and professional trainings through the Imperial and UCY learning programmes. Examples include topics such as successful research proposal and paper writing, presentation skills, communication of ideas, time management, etc.
- Technical Training: Special courses will be organised for the purposes of educating the KIOS CoE researchers on technical skills, which are relevant to the needs of the industry, on standards, etc.
Online Courses
A number of online courses will be prepared by KIOS CoE personnel on topics within the specialisation areas of the Centre such as monitoring and control, fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control, security and protection for researchers as well as for the industry. An effort will be made to make the courses accessible to a wide audience through a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Platform. In addition, the courses will include several practical examples and case studies using the CIS Testbeds developed at KIOS CoE. Such courses are also expected to raise the international visibility of KIOS CoE.