CyberSchool to open in September 2020
At the start of the 2020 academic year, CyberSchool will offer students an interdisciplinary program in fundamental and emerging fields of cyber security. It will offer innovative high-level international programs, backed with cutting-edge research that aims to double the number of cyber security graduates in Rennes and eventually reach 580 students. ENSAI is a stakeholder in this research university.
The only French university research school (EUR) in cyber security
CyberSchool is based on the graduate school model. The course program is nourished by research, driven by 140 experts in cyber security: professors and researchers from joint research units. At the heart of Rennes, which is already recognized for its role in cyber security, graduate students and interns at CyberSchool will benefit from close interactions with numerous academic and socioeconomic actors united within the Pôle d’Excellence Cyber. Supported by high-level research, CyberSchool will offer Master (including continuing education) and PhD courses in English. To attract the best students, this program will offer scholarships based on academic excellence and mobility as well as offer numerous opportunities to study abroad within in a prestigious international university network.
A comprehensive cyber security program
Cyberschool is based on an interdisciplinary approach that associates Mathematics, Digital Science and Technologies, and Humanities and Social Sciences in six research fields:
– Cryptography
– Privacy rights and protection
– Artificial intelligence and security
– Hardware and embedded systems
– Formal methods and security
– Software and systems security
The program will examine any theories, methods, and algorithms ensuring security in our digital society in relation to the different types of content to protect in a variety of contexts and operating conditions (mobile, cloud, industrial systems, connected objects, etc.).
A flexible course offering for an à la carte academic experience
The Master’s program revolves around a research project (students will join a research team during the first year of the program), and internship in a laboratory (at a university or in industry), and a flexible course catalogue, combining a major and a minor. Students will choose a major among the 6 research fields at CyberSchool. For a minor, students can opt for one of the other 6 fields or innovation and entrepreneurial courses, law, or political science.
The synergy between academic research and the socio-economic world will also enrich the PhD program: during work on their thesis, PhD students will use their expertise in companies, demonstrating the potential and skills of young researchers. In order to raise awareness about the issues surrounding Cyber Security, CyberSchool will endeavor to make sure undergraduate students also benefit from its activities.
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A boost for cyber security research in Rennes
CyberSchool relies on a network of close knit and historic collaborations between researchers and professors in Rennes and well-known international partner institutions like KU Leuven, Chalmers University of Technology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Cornell University, Graz University of Technology, Max-Plank-Institut für Informatik. Each year CyberSchool will host some of the best cyber security researchers in the world who will teach and work with Rennes-based research teams. Research chairs in Cyber Security will be created as well. Researchers from various organizations (CNRS, Inria, etc.), who teach at CyberSchool will have adjunct professor status. Rennes’s excellence in cyber security provides fertile ground from which CyberSchool can grow to become the most complete higher-education program in Europe.
A winning project in France’s “Investing in the Future” Program
Led by the University of Rennes 1, CyberSchool is based on expertise of Rennes’s universities, four graduate engineering schools (CentraleSupélec, IMT Atlantique, INSA Rennes, and ENSAI), ENS Rennes, and Science-Po Rennes, with closeties to CNRS and INRIA research labs, and in collaboration with the Region of Brittany, Rennes Métropole, and the French military’s Directorate General of Armaments. CyberSchool is a winner of the 2nd wave of calls for University Research Schools via the “Investing in the Future” Program and will benefit from 5.75 million euros in state funding over a ten-year period. Following the announcement from Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education and Research, on August 29, 2019, three other University Research School projects, involving University of Rennes institutions, were also selected: DIGISPORT (Sport Sciences), GS-CAPS (Public Spaces), and LuMoMat-E (Molecular Materials for Organic Electronics and Photonics).
Download the CyberSchool brochure