Master of Science in Smart, Secure and Interconnected Systems

ongoing

The main objective of the MERIT project is to build a dynamic educational ecosystem for the training of digital specialists, where different stakeholders (four European universities, industrial partners, excellence and research centres, national technology transfer organisations, and Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs)) collaborate on the design of a joint Master program. MERIT partners will build on the market need studies and future research directions to define both hard and soft skills to be targeted within the program. Considering the current market needs and trends, the project mainly concentrates on Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Cybersecurity areas. To increase the number of specialists in these areas, various means will be encompassed: edification of the society on ICT potential and specialist need; reskilling of non ICT specialists by providing conversion courses; promoting the benefits of diversity in the ICT field; provisioning of short-term courses and developing learning resources for life-long learning and upskilling. To assure a high quality and flexible career path to the students, MERIT partners will collaborate to jointly design the master programme, and will provide mobility opportunities (to both teaching staff and students), blended learning options, integration of research aspects and market problems to hands-on projects, hackathons and Master theses, and future career assistance. The students’ learning progress will be monitored together with data mining based tools and necessary actions will be taken to ensure timely intervention and support. The MERIT ecosystem will not be limited to the MERIT partners’ countries. Especially the European countries with low DESI index will be targeted through EDIH networks of the MERIT partners. Underrepresented communities and hackathon winners will be prioritised through scholarships to attract a large number of potential students.