As part of the Faculty’s objectives to transform the student’s experience and expose students to global research and advancements in Information Technology, the Faculty of Information Technology plans an academic trip for its fourth year students annually.

This year, 47 fourth year students embarked on a tour of computer science centers of excellence in Europe from 18^th March to 26^th March 2017. The purpose of the one week trip was to expose the students to research and advancements in IT through visits to top universities and research centers in three cities in Europe (Paris, Zurich and Saarbrucken).

The trip also provided an opportunity for the faculty to benchmark with these top universities and industry leaders.

The various centers of excellence that were visited included:

1. IBM Research Lab in Zurich:

The European branch of IBM research, world-renowned for its scientific achievements.  The IBM-Zurich lab focus areas are future chip technologies; nanotechnology; fiber optics; supercomputing; data storage; security and privacy; risk and compliance; business optimization and transformation; server systems.

During the visit, students got to learn about various research projects at IBM, including well known IBM Watson and possible career opportunities. A demo of IBM Watson was done and two of our students awarded for getting correct answers to questions asked to Watson.

2. ETH University

A science, technology, engineering and mathematics university in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. ETH Zurich is consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world. It is currently ranked as 5th best university in the world for the subject of engineering and technology, just behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Cambridge University and National University of Singapore in the QS World University Rankings by Subject.

Students were exposed to cutting edge research in computer science in the University including: cybersecurity, gps spoofing and machine learning.

3. Saarland University- CISPA (Center for IT-Security, Privacy and Accountability)

A competence center for IT security at Saarland University, addressing cyber security questions in a truly holistic manner: seminal foundational solutions based on newly developed principles and approaches are systematically developed into deployable security technologies and finally into prototypical and actually deployed systems in collaboration with industrial partners and own spin-off companies.

4. Max-Planck Institute for informatics (MPI- INF)-Saarbrucken

A research institute in computer science with a focus on algorithms and their applications in a broad sense. Their research ranges from foundations (algorithms and complexity, programming logics) to a variety of application domains (computer graphics, geometric computation, constraint solving, program verification, databases and information systems, and computational biology/bioinformatics)

5. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)-Saarbrucken

The leading German research institute in the field of innovative software technology. In the international scientific community, DFKI ranks among the most recognized “Centers of Excellence” and currently is the biggest research center worldwide in the area of Artificial Intelligence and its application in terms of number of employees and the volume of external fund.

In addition to the centers of excellence visited, students also got a chance to visits tourist locations in the cities including the well-known Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral.

The trip was a major success as students got exposed to world class research and were able to identify opportunities to further their studies and career opportunities.

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