THE CONSORTIUM

The partners that participate in this  Erasmus Mundus Design Measure are:

MONROE exploits a significant complementarity of the expertise of the consortium partners and well defined mobility paths that bring practical and specific competence to the perspective students. All partners have strong expertise on optical communication theory and techniques and extensive system and network experimental facilities.

 A consortium asset capable of covering such a value chain in the theoretical design, block design and integration in a miniaturized integrated device (according to different integration technologies) is quite unique in the landscape of the European education system. Overall the consortium expresses a joint competence to face innovation at the system and network level. The three partners (SSSA, BME and UGLA) will involve two fabrication facilities for photonic technologies (Inphotec at SSSA, and the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at UGLA ) and extensive Lab facilities at BME.

Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), is the coordinator of the EMDM MONROE proposal and part of the EELISA European University Consortium. It is one of the six special statute public universities, known as Scuole Universitarie Superiori (Schools of Advanced Studies) operating in Italy. SSSA engages in research and education both in the field of applied sciences and social sciences. Teaching activities are conducted within two academic schools (Experimental and Social Sciences) and scientific research and higher education courses (PhD programme, master’s degrees, higher education courses) are developed in the context of six research institutes: Biorobotics, TeCIP (Communication, Information and Photonics), Life Sciences, Management, Economics and DirPOLIS (Law, Politics and Development). The institutes are equivalent to departments that have, since 2010, programmed their activities in order to enhance the relationship between training and research, interdisciplinarity and interaction with the broader scientific, social, economic and cultural worlds. Alongside the six institutes, two Departments of Excellence were established in 2018 when Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna was successful in the fields of both Experimental Sciences and Social Sciences in the National Competitive Call for Funding The two Departments are EMbeDS (Economics and Management in the era of Data Science) and the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Department of Excellence. Although it is a young university, formally established in 1987, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna has an extremely high national and international standing. The latest THE ranking (2020) places Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in 149th position globally out of 1,396 universities reviewed, and 7th globally out of the 250 young universities reviewed.

The Institute for Telecommunication, Computer Engineering and Photonics (TeCIP) at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna has run since the year 2009 Erasmus Mundus initiatives. It boasts 5 edition of the Erasmus Mundus Master Degree on Photonic Networks Engineering – MAPNET and 3 editions of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Photonic Integrated Circuits, Sensors and NETworks (PIXNET) at http://pixnet.santannapisa.it/ The TeCIP Institute, the major actor in this proposal, was created in Pisa in 2001 as a Centre of Excellence of the Italian University, Scientific and Technological Research Ministry. Main research areas of the Institute are optical communication networks, in-network processing, mobile radio networks (Optical Communication Research Unit), IT applications of embedded real-time systems and sensor networks for the Internet of Things (Real Time Systems Research Unit). Around 100 professors and researchers can count upon an annual budget of more than 5 million euros to develop their research activities, with the main objective of leading the innovation to an extent of technological development to be used in the field. The innovative training initiatives, taught in English, such as PhD, Master’s degrees and Italian University Masters, are in line with the highest international standards.

This new Erasmus Mundus Master's on phOtonic NetwoRking and clOud Engineering (MONROE) targets the specific technological areas of Data Centre networking, coherent optical communication systems and Photonic Integrated Systems and Networks. These areas are currently recognized as one of the most significant within ICT and the enabling architectures for the Future Internet for the next decades. MONROE course curricula and syllabi have been updated in order to respond to the current education needs of the industrial and technology development landscape.

The University of Glasgow (UGLA) is a public research university in the United Kingdom founded in 1451. It is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world, placing among the top 10 UK universities and with an established presence in the top 1% of world universities. The university is located in the West End of Glasgow and has a diverse student population of around 37.000 students from over 140 countries. It offers a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs across four faculties: Arts, Engineering, Medicine, and Social Sciences. The University of Glasgow is known for its high-quality research and academic excellence, with a strong reputation in fields such as life sciences, engineering, law, business, and humanities. It is a member of the prestigious Russell Group of research-intensive universities in the UK and has consistently ranked among the top 100 universities in the world. The university also has modern facilities, including a world-class sports complex, a student union building, and numerous libraries and research centers.

The James Watt School of Engineering (JWSoE) has been one of the first universities worldwide to confer degrees in Engineering since 1840. From its inception, the JWSoE has been at the forefront of discovery, creation and practice, setting new standards for education, research and innovation. The research activities are grouped into 5 Divisions: Aerospace Science, Infrastructure & Environment, Biomedical Engineering, Power & Energy, and Electronic & Nanoscale Engineering. Of relevance to MONROE is the over 30-year legacy in the development of integrated electronic and photonic systems for ICT, which has supported a broad range of socially and industrially relevant applications. With the opening of the James-Watt Nanofabrication Centre (JWNC) in 2006, UGLA has one of the finest nanofabrication facilities in Europe, featuring over £50M of equipment and tools housed in a 1500 m2 cleanroom facility.

Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem (Budapest, Hungary), BME, founded in 1782, has always been the top higher education institution of Hungary and it has a well-established international reputation. The foundation of the effectiveness of the university is the devoted educational activities of its professors and the hard work and enthusiasm of the students. These values ensure the stability and continuity of education, scientific research and technological development at the institution. BME has become one of the leading research universities of Hungary and is well-known for its scientific results abroad. Past years have proven that degrees from and the knowledge and skills obtained at BME are a valuable passport to the job market. Therefore, BME maintains its leading position in the training of engineers and in the country’s technical development. BME currently has more than 23,000 students in 8 faculties, 77 university departments, 13 doctorate schools and 1 masters’ school, and offers further specialist training in more than 40 fields. Courses are offered in five languages, and the degrees awarded fulfil the basic accreditation criteria of the European engineering set by the FEANI association. Yearly more than 1,560 students get their MSc and more than 110 students get their PhD degree. Nearly 40% of the PhD students are studying and working at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics. BME has actively and successfully participated in the EU’s earlier Framework Programmes. BME’s research teams generally participate in the programmes as consortium members, but there have been multiple projects in which the university was the coordinator. BME researchers participated in over 200 FP projects, out of which more than 90 were in the ICT field.

On behalf of BME, the High-Speed Networks Laboratory (HSNLab) of the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics (TMIT) will take part in the Project. The main research areas of the group are the following: cloud / edge / fog computing, cloud native technologies, software defined networking, network function virtualization, 5G and beyond, network design and routing with resilience, intelligent communication algorithms and protocols for packet switched technologies, performance and teletraffic modelling of broadband multimedia networks, novel AR/VR applications, IoT and Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, big data frameworks, techno-economics of ICT systems and market mechanisms. HSNLab consists of approximately 20 lecturers and researchers, 20 PhD and MSc students, and it is hosted at the Faculty of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

This page was last modified on 6th April 2023