Welcome by the Rector

Portrait photo of UNIC Rector, Professor Philippos Pouyioutas

Dear prospective student,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to navigate the University’s website, which will help you make an informed decision with regards to joining our expanding university community. I do hope that you will entrust us with shaping your future career and with preparing you to become an active global citizen. We stand ready to jointly work with you towards obtaining your degree and realising your dreams.

The University of Nicosia is a modern, innovative and internationally top-ranked university, guided by its commitment to excellence in education. Our focus on implementing the “Knowledge Square” ensures that we are committed in serving the four pillars underpinning a high quality, successful and sustainable university: teaching and learning, research, innovation, and contribution to society and culture.

To this end, during your studies with us, you will be engaged in an innovative student-centred teaching and learning environment, which promotes active self-learning that will impart lifelong learning skills and competences.

Our state-of-the-art premises and innovative e-learning platform will provide you access to extensive online learning resources. Moreover, our multicultural learning environment promotes cooperation, friendship and understanding, facilitating a place of study that celebrates diversity and inclusion.

As an entrepreneurial digital university, we respond to, and shape the needs of, the knowledge-based society we live in. We will thus provide you with a fully digital educational environment, inspired by technology and driven by pedagogy, that promotes teaching, learning and innovation.

Importantly, we will also provide you with a diverse set of programmes, designed, developed and enhanced in close collaboration with industry stakeholders and relevant professional associations, so as to meet global industry needs and ensure recognition by relevant professional bodies. Our alumni statistics are indicative of the high employability of our graduates in varied sectors across the globe.

Our commitment to conducting state-of-the-art research ensures that our high quality and dynamic international teaching and research staff brings innovative knowledge to your classes, emanating from funded research projects and extensive collaborations with local and international industries. Moreover, our commitment to implementing Open and Citizen Science ensures that our research delivers substantial benefits to society on a national and global scale.

Our commitment to internationalisation and quality guide us in offering cross-border education, through joint/double programmes with other prestigious universities in Europe. Furthermore, we are a member of the NEOLAiA European University Alliance, alongside with another eight universities from eight other European countries, all committed in jointly building an innovative European University of the Future with campuses in nine cities/countries.

Finally, our commitment towards contributing to Society and Culture guide us as a civic university. To this end, we are actively supporting the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs, in order to transform our world into a better, more inclusive and peaceful place.

All our endeavours as outlined above, have resulted in establishing us as a top university, as attested by our outstanding ranking achievements, particularly by the 2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE WUR). We are indeed extremely proud to rank among the top 2% of universities globally, placing among the Top 501-600 universities in the world, 155th in the European Union and 1st in Cyprus and Greece, alongside the University of Cyprus, the University of Crete, and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Furthermore, we rank 1st in Cyprus in two of the five Performance Indicators Areas that universities are ranked, namely Research Quality and International Outlook. In this respect, we are recognised by THE WUR as the best University in Cyprus in these areas.

We will offer you an academically stimulating environment, confident that your studies with us will meet your intellectual queries, fuel your aspirations, and positively shape your future career. We are also certain that your student life at the University of Nicosia will be a once-in-a- lifetime experience.

I look forward to welcoming you into the University of Nicosia community.

Professor Philippos Pouyioutas
BSc, MSc, PhD, CertEd