The ADVANCE CRT – What is it?

The ADVANCE CRT is a Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research Training focused on Future Networks and the Internet of Things with applications in sustainable and independent living. ADVANCE will train 120 PhD students, recruited in four annual cohorts of 30 students across the five partner universities, beginning with the academic year 2019/20

ADVANCE Vision

We live in a society where ubiquitous, high-speed communication networks enable, and increasingly dominate, our family, social and working lives. These networks enable an ever-increasing range of human-to-machine and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication applications in the Internet of Things. This expanding hyper-connectivity will create new communication, sensing and control services, and forms of interconnectivity and services between people and Things in ways we cannot yet even fully envisage. Two societal pressures drive the need for hyper-connectivity – Urbanisation and Rural Depopulation.

Meeting both the technical and societal challenges of global hyper-connectivity requires multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches. Our vision is to train the next generation of researchers who will seek solutions to the technical and societal challenges of global hyper-connectivity between large numbers of People and Things. We will explore opportunities for a range of novel applications in sustainable and independent living enabled by such networks that will become critically important to sustain large dense cities and alleviate problems of rural depopulation. Given the far-reaching technological, economic, social and personal impacts of hyper-connectivity, our researchers will, in addition to deep competence in their individual disciplines, need understanding of these wider ethical, social and economic aspects. They will need the ability to collaborate with, learn from, and communicate their discipline-specific knowledge with other disciplines and the public who will be the beneficiaries of their collective expertise.

ADVANCE PhD Programme

The 4-year PhD Programme features:

  • Intensive Summer, Autumn and Winter School events throughout the Programme
  • Opportunities for multidisciplinary research
  • Supervision by internationally renowned Principal Investigators

In addition, scholars benefit from:

  • Access to a network of research groups from Universities and Research Institutes from around the world that will offer our students placement opportunities
  • Professional skills training allowance
  • Travel funds to national training days and international conferences
  • Equipment (including a laptop or PC)
  • Generous tax-free annual stipend of €19,000
  • Fee contribution of €5500 towards University fees (fee rate for EU nationals)