Institute for the future (IFF)

The Institute For the Future (IFF) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Nicosia (UNIC) in Cyprus, which aims to improve the development, deployment and uptake of emerging technologies, and contribute to their successful application in industry, education, and government. The research centre also dedicates resources to researching and evaluating emerging technologies’ impact on employment, wealth inequality, and work and social life. The mission of the IFF is to educate the leaders of tomorrow, develop knowledge and encourage knowledge-sharing, and help society prepare better and respond to future challenges.

About this initiative

The IFF initiative was born out of an ambition to explore the extent to which emerging, new technologies will spark a rapidly-accelerating societal change. Technologies like AI and blockchain may bring about a range of disruptions – but as they begin to reach maturity and new synergies are being developed every minute – they are expected to incur compounding effects on economic sectors, social and legal systems, income distribution, government, education and healthcare. All of this raises fundamental questions on how future society should be organised: and the IFF initiative attempts to address them.

IFF has educated over 145,000 students in academic and professional training courses, while “hosting the world’s largest team of faculty and staff focused on crypto-assets and blockchains”. It serves as the academic lead for the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum (EUBOF), a European Commission initiative aiming to accelerate the development of blockchain within Europe. The EUBOF project finished in June 2024, providing a range of resources targeting those new to blockchain technology, and offering basic knowledge and insight into blockchain’s various applications. The recently inaugurated Open Metaverse Initiative (OMI) further showcases UNIC’s commitment, focusing on academic, research, and policy dimensions of the metaverse, emphasizing open public systems.

Why is this a good practice?

The Institute for the Future achieved considerable impact since its kick-off back in 2013, in part, due to the international outlook of the University of Nicosia (educational programmes are predominantly offered in English; and the university is the largest institution in Southern Europe when it comes to the provision of formal education programmes in English). The university is the leading formal education institution on blockchain and has been the first one to publish blockchain certificates and accepting bitcoin as payment for tuition fees. A large portion of the courses are available online and in English, incorporating a variety of different formats: a testament to the initiative’s scalability. The MOOCs developed by the centre have had a wide outreach, with more than 35,000 students from 95 countries enrolled. In addition, the master’s programme Blockchain and Digital Currencies of the university has succeeded in educating more than 650 students since 2014.

Today, IFF is home to the largest blockchain and metaverse student community in the world and partners with more than 100 research organisations from all over Europe and the world. IFF has supported the distribution of over €8 million in competitive European Commission research grants since 2017.