Odysseus (ODCSSS) is the Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School in Ireland. It is a four-year collaborative summer school started by the School of Computer Science & Informatics at University College Dublin and the School of Computing at Dublin City University and is supported by Adaptive Information Cluster.

In 2008 the program starts on Tuesday June 3rd and runs for twelve weeks. Applications from Irish and international students are sought. Students who are successful in their application will be offered an internship and will be paid 300 (Eur) per-week as a tax-free scholarship. Some international travel support is available and we can help with arranging on campus accommodation.

The primary goal of this school is to afford exceptional undergraduate students the opportunity to participate and contribute to exciting yet challenging research projects at leading research facilities and inspire them to go on to undertake research careers. Applicants apply online and are selected based on their CV, motivations and references and they will be distributed to the projects according to their preferences. Applications for can only come through the website and are limited to 2nd and 3rd year undergraduate students. Students who are offered an internship must attend a number of events during the summer (kick off day, midterm research day, final research day) and are expected to submit a final report, final poster and present during the course of the internship. They are also expected to participate in industrial and other site visits. There are a number of social events arranged which are after hours and are optional but we strongly encourage all participants to attend.

In particular, we offer an environment for students which emphasises cooperation among researchers within and across institutions, and which leverages the distributed nature of the interaction to ensure that everyone is exposed to a wide range of state of the art research and facilities.

While focusing on world class research, this school provides the participants with exposure to a distributed, cooperative and collaborative research environment facilitated and supported by weekly exchanges of the entire summer school cohort to alternating site locations, thematic web-sites for the presentation of research progress and results to the public, web-based tools for intra-area and inter-area collaboration, weekly activities to ferment cooperation and collaboration, weekly seminars, research management seminars including Intellectual Property and patenting, on-going support for collaboration through the use of always-on video conferencing and weekly social activities.

This school incorporates a range of novel aspects and learning and research modes which should make for an enjoyable and memorable experience for research supervisors and students alike.

Finally, the name Odysseus comes from the phonetic sound that the acronym ODCSSS (Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School ) makes when spoken. It is also appropriate for a research internship program as from the Greek “Odysseus” means “a guide; the one showing the way”.

Would you like to read about the range of projects in 2008?