The University of Cyprus (UCY) is a leading educational, research institution, and a center of excellence in the Mediterranean region. It is the leading university and the most active research institution in Cyprus (according to the most recent European Research Rankings), UCY is the youngest institution to be ranked in the top 550 Higher Education Institutions in the world (placed in the 351-400 group for 2015-2016 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings). Furthermore, UCY has been recently ranked 55th worldwide in the “150 Under 50 Rankings” of the top 150 universities under 50 years old (THE World University Rankings). UCY is committed to excellence across all its academic and administrative entities and is one of the few organizations in Cyprus holding the EFQM “Committed to Excellence” Award and acknowledged with the “HR Excellence in Research” logo. Furthermore, it currently delivers up to 350 externally funded research projects, including several FP7 and H2020 projects, and 15 ERC Grants, as well as national and regional research programmes funded by the National Research Promotion Foundation and the European Structural Funds. UCY holds two of the three ERC Advanced Grants awarded to researchers in Cyprus, one of which was awarded to the KIOS CoE coordinator, Professor Marios Polycarpou.
The KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence for Intelligent Systems and Networks (KIOS CoE) is a large research center within the University of Cyprus which has been operating since 2008, with an ambitious goal to become a center of excellence in the field of Information Technology and Communication, with emphasis on the design of intelligent systems and networks. The KIOS CoE addresses some of the most important research and technological challenges of monitoring, control, management and security of Critical Infrastructure (CI) systems, by advancing ICT research towards intelligent systems and networks, able to produce smart decisions from large volumes of data. Its research team specializes in a wide range of areas, such as systems and control, distributed systems and algorithms, graph theory and optimization, computational intelligence, fault diagnosis and fault tolerance, and embedded systems, in an attempt to provide holistic and viable solutions for a variety of critical systems and applications. The Center boasts a critical mass of researchers with expertise in applied and industrial-geared research and innovation, particularly in the area of intelligent monitoring, management, and safety of critical infrastructure systems. In particular, the Center concentrates on infrastructures related to energy and power, telecommunications, water resources, and transportation.
The Center has secured more than 60 research funded programs, totaling over €15 million Euros from EU funding. With these research grants, the research center employs more than 80 researchers, to undertake important research in key technological areas of importance to Cyprus and the global economy. Amongst the projects being delivered at KIOS is an ERC Advanced Grant, several FP7 projects, as well as projects funded by the European Structural Fund Programmes. The center has recently been selected to receive funding from the European Union to advance into a flagship research and innovation center of excellence —the first such Center in Cyprus. This success is the result of a lengthy and extremely competitive proposal process coordinated by the Europe Commission as part of the EU’s strategic programme “Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation – Teaming”. In this endeavor, KIOS is collaborating with Imperial College London, one of the most respected universities in the world consistently ranked in the list of top-10 universities worldwide.
