ICT Labs launches PhD training centre

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s (EIT) ICT Labs Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) has launched a new Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) in Hungary.

The DTC is a partnership between the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and will see the first 16 students begin their studies soon. It’s hoped that the DTC will assist the development of new industrial products, particularly in navigation, mobile networks and cloud computing.

The new centre was officially opened by Willem Jonker, the chief executive of ICT Labs, who said: “The Budapest DTC greatly stimulates the integration of academic education and business. By building on the high level technical knowledge and scientific results of the doctoral schools of highly renowned universities, companies have the potential to acquire more easily new technologies as well as highly skilled employees.”

The DTC’s students will be supervised by business experts. Adding his thoughts, Zoltán Horváth, the dean of the Faculty of Informatics at the ELTE and the head of the EIT ICT Labs Budapest Associate Partner Group, said the centre would provide “valuable work experience” and key education in knowledge and innovation. He also commented that the DTC would encourage a knowledge transfer in Europe as students would “spend a minimum of six months at a leading and highly innovative ICT company and study temporarily abroad at one of the most highly renowned universities in Western Europe”.

The EIT will receive extra funding under Horizon 2020 and will result in the development of six new KICs by 2018.