OUS Cyprus

We warmly invite you to what promises to be a very interesting event. On June 5th at the Auditorium Alpha, European University Cyprus, the Minister of Energy Georgios Lakkotrypis and Dean and Professor of Risk Assessment Dr George Boustras will speak about the host of new prospects but also about the problems that may arise from natural gas exploitation in Cyprus.

Please RSVP to our chairman Mr Charles Dodd: charlesdodd@yahoo.co.uk

You are warmly invited to the interactive industry-academia workshop which aims to bring together companies from any sector and researchers with a mathematical background (Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science). The workshop is organized by the pan-European Mathematics for Industry Network (ΜΙ-ΝΕΤ), the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Cyprus University of Technology and the British High Commission on the 27^th of October, 9.30-12.30 at the premises of the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on the 7^th floor.

Several successful examples of collaborations between universities and companies will be presented by international and local experts.

The Society is one of the supporters of this workshop. The University of Oxford is one of the worldwide leaders in industry-academia collaborations. Dr Katerina Kaouri, one of our alumni, is in the Organising Committee of the event and she will present at the workshop an Oxford idea, that of the Study Group with Industry. Study Groups with Industry, week-long intensive workshops where researchers work with companies, started in Oxford in 1968 and they have since then been successfully organized in more than 20 countries. Also, one of the invited speakers is Dr Ian Griffiths, Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, who has successfully collaborated for years with the companies Dyson, Pall and Nestle amongst others.

Discussion, networking and brainstorming will follow with the vision to identify and launch more academia-industry collaborations in Cyprus.

The workshop is addressed to: researchers, companies, policy-makers.

You can find more details about the event and also register online here by the 26th of October.

Alternatively, you can register by faxing or emailing this registration form to the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Sir Edward du Cann died on 31^st August­­ aged 93.   He had been the President of the Cyprus Branch of the Oxford University Society for many years.

There have been long obituaries in the English newspapers recalling some of Sir Edward’s achievements as a senior politician and as a businessman before his retirement to Cyprus sixteen years ago.   Until his health began to fail, he attended every meeting of the Society, travelling from his home near Paphos to Limassol or Nicosia, always happy to give a spontaneous vote of thanks or to delight a rapt audience with humour and casually censored reminiscence.

When he arrived at an event, he would glide into a room, attended by a shoal of companions.   Then, with a mischievous look, he would head for someone who caught his eye, perhaps to offer a complimentary word about a tie, but in a way which was calculated to leave the wearer unsure whether the tie was a sartorial marvel or a grotesque aberration.   Sir Edward had an urbane impishness.   Unerringly considerate and polite, however insignificant one’s own contribution to an occasion, he would always telephone his thanks and congratulations the next day.

When the Society held a party each year for students about to go up to Oxford, he would join in with enthusiasm.   I remember one such occasion in a taverna in the old part of Nicosia with Edward holding court and eight or nine Freshers taking in every word.   He was a charmer to the end.

(Charles Dodd, Chairman, Oxford University Society in Cyprus)

The Oxford University Society in Cyprus and the Cyprus University of Technology have the pleasure of inviting you to a talk by Prof. Andreas Anayiotos, Rector of the Cyprus University of Technology, with the title

“Innovation, Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship in Cyprus Academia”

Date and time: 22nd September 2017, 6.30pm

Venue: Amphitheatre 2, Tassos Papadopoulos Building, Cyprus University of Technology, Themidos and Ifigenias corner

The talk will be followed by discussion and a reception.

Note: the talk will be in English.

RSVP by the 19th of September: Charles Dodd, charlesdodd@yahoo.co.uk

For more details check the Facebook event.

You can read the talk of Prof. Anayiotos here.

The Oxford Society’s next meeting will be on the evening of Wednesday, 14th of June at Hilton Cyprus, Nicosia. Our speaker will be Dr Anastasia Constantinou, Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre (ENTICE) and IDEA Programme coordinator at the Cyprus International Institute of Management.

Brief outline: Much is said about innovation, which has become a major buzz word, creating a veil of mystery around it as being rare, complicated and strictly scientific! In my presentation, I will try to demystify innovation by discussing the basic concepts, the drivers and the types and sources through examples from our everyday lives. I will conclude with some remarks on the importance of protecting intellectual property in the innovation process.

Speaker profile: Dr Anastasia Constantinou is the director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre, ENTICE, of the Cyprus International Institute of Management, CIIM, and a member of the CIIM resident faculty, teaching Entrepreneurship and Innovation related topics. She is behind the initiation, design and development of the IDEA programme cofounded by CIIM and the Bank of Cyprus which she coordinates from the side of CIIM and is an executive member of its steering committee.

Anastasia combines academic, industrial, business and consulting background in the fields of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Research for more than 25 years having lived and worked in three countries, UK, Greece and Cyprus. She actively supports the development of start-ups in Cyprus and has played an instrumental role in the creation of two academic spin-offs in Greece. She is involved in the patenting of technologies and in negotiating licensing agreements for the exploitation of research results from Universities and research institutions in Greece and in Cyprus. She is also the main inventor of an international industrial patent.

Anastasia holds a BSc in Metallurgy from UMIST, UK, an MSc in Materials Research and a PhD in Materials Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK and an MBA from CIIM, Cyprus. She is a Chelsea fan by birth!

The committee of the Cyprus Branch met last week and began planning the arrangements for 2017.  The committee consists of five of us: Katerina Kaouri (Hon. Secretary), Artemis Yiordamli, Loukia Taxitari, Nicolas Kyriakides and myself as Chairman. As usual, we are putting together a programme of events and activities for the year. Suggestions and recommendations are always most welcome.

The Branch met five times in 2016: We started the year with a presentation by Dr Loukia Taxitari on language development in young infants; in May Dr Odysseas Michaelides, the Auditor General of the Republic, addressed the Society on the role of the Audit Office in ensuring transparency and accountability in the public sector; later in the year we hosted a party for Freshers going up to Oxford, undergraduate and (most of them) postgraduate; in November the Branch collaborated with Terra Cypria in a well-attended launch of the book “Wildlife in Cyprus”; and on 20th December a number of us attended the Society’s Christmas dinner at the Coudounari House in Limassol.

Charles Dodd