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THE CYPRUS Development Bank believes the new Cyprus Institute it is planning
to set up will, "in terms of excellence, be viewed with other world
famous private elite research driven universities like the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Santa Fe Institute," General
Manager Yiannakis Ioannides said yesterday.
He was speaking ahead of today's lunch in Nicosia to introduce the
Institute, which the Development Bank has pioneered as a top new research
and education centre.
The institute's stated objective is to provide a new research and
educational institute, with a strong scientific and technological
orientation that would be achieved through an "evolutionary approach
funded by global resources that addresses the concerns of the global
community and derives its support from the global community," said
Ioannides.
The institute plans to draw upon the knowledge and expertise of some of the
finest minds in the world, who will be in Cyprus over the next few days,
including Nobel prize winners in Chemistry (Paul Crutzen, 1995) and Medicine
(Harold Varmus, 1989) as well as professors from MIT, Harvard, Yale and
Cornell and top European universities and research institutes.
"This is one of the very rare occasions in human endeavour when so many
people from so many diverse sources are congregating on a small island to
address the issues of the global community," added Ioannides.
According to a press release from the Bank, the thinking behind the new
institution is to take educational standards beyond the limitations of
'traditional universities, shaped in earlier historical and technological
eras, that are ill-suited to manage the newly emerged enabling
technologies." It claims that "the Cyprus Institute will be
attuned by design to the newest technologies, challenges and opportunities
of the 21st century."
The institute will be residential in nature and self-supporting through fees
and gifts. An eventual student body of approximately 3,000 is expected, of
which 2,000 will be undergraduates and 1,000 research and professional
graduate students. It is estimated that the centre will require a capital
investment of several hundred million euros, with ongoing operational
expenses in excess of 60 million euros.
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