The International Curriculum Option of Doctoral Studies in Networked, Embedded, and Hybrid Control Systems for Complex Distributed Heterogeneous Systems (ICO-NEH) provides a common cultural and academic substrate in the field by establishing a network of institutions that impose common supplementary criteria for the participating PhD students, in addition to those of their already-existing doctoral programs.
The ICO-NEH Convention was established in the framework of the Network of Excellence in Hybrid Control (HYCON2), sponsored by the European Commission, and is an an integral part of the activities of the European Embedded Control Institute (EECI).
The Curriculum offers a course of specialized study in hybrid systems for those students already enrolled in a PhD programme at one of the participating host Institutions. Participants are required to fulfil specific career requirements in order to be granted the ICO-NEH certification. PhD students that apply to this program (which is open to students of all Universities, based only on curricular qualifications) are required to spend two periods of several months in a foreign partner institution and to follow common PhD schools and seminars taught by world leader experts.
One of the goals of the Curriculum is to encourage student mobility to different European and world-wide academic institutions and industrial research centers as part of a well-rounded background training. The detailed rules for career advancement, thesis review and defence are decided by the Curriculum Board of Representatives, and are available on this web-site.
ICO-NEH is the prosecution of ICO (www.centropiaggio.unipi.it/ICO), established among 17 Universities in 2006. In view of the success of the first three years of duration of ICO, EECI has decided to make the Curriculum an integral part of its educational strategy, to renew the Convention enlarging it to new partners and redefining the scientific scope, and to host the Administration of the Curriculum.