CENIT@EA seeks to provide an excellency-driven engagement-focused platform for integrated research on embedded and mobile systems. It focuses on four major research and two cross-cutting themes that bring together existing expertise of the partnering institutions with the focus of strong engagement with local communities in East Africa as well as in other sub-Saharan Africa regions. The following research topics stand in the centre of CENIT@EA and will be addressed in the Master’s programme as well as in thematic workshops, trainings, internships, and summer schools with external experts.
Mobile Computing is a technology that allows transmission of data, voice and video via a computer, without having to be connected to a fixed physical link. Mobile computing involves mobile communication, mobile hardware, and mobile software. Communication issues include ad hoc networks and infrastructure networks as well as communication properties, protocols, data formats and concrete technologies. Hardware includes mobile devices or device components. Mobile software deals with the characteristics and requirements of mobile applications.
Embedded Systems are computer systems with a dedicated function within a larger physical – be it mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc. or blends thereof– system, often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete cyber-physical device tightly integrating software, digital hardware, sensors and actuators, and increasingly also networking functionality, as in the internet of things. Embedded systems control many devices already in common use today and form the backbone of expected smart physical systems. Ninety-eight percent (98%) of all microprocessors are manufactured as components of embedded systems.
Project Management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria. A project is a temporary endeavour designed to produce a unique product, service or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or deliverable) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value.
Soft Skills are a combination of interpersonal people skills, social skills, communication skills, character traits, attitudes, career attributes, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients among others that enable people to effectively navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals with complementing hard skills.
Entrepreneurship has traditionally been defined as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which typically begins as a small business, such as a start-up company, offering a product, process or service for sale or hire. The people who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs.
Information Systems is an academic study of systems with a specific reference to information and the complementary networks of hardware and software that people and organizations use to collect, filter, process, create and distribute data. An emphasis is put on an information system having a definitive boundary, users, processors, storage, inputs, outputs and the communication networks.