Ulysseus Cyber Security Science Shop

The growing digital transformation across industries at the global level has amplified the urgency for attracting young people towards the cyber security career while applying multidisciplinary and practical approaches to cybersecurity challenges. Specifically, cyber security as an area interfering with the life of practically every citizen in a digitalised society, requires intensive and multi-layered interaction of the digital service creators, providers and users.

Science Shops are a model of public engagement with research and innovation practices. They aim to respond to community organisations’ or other stakeholders’ needs and requests through a participative and co-creative processes, thus making the research and innovation knowledge, services and products more relevant for the society as a whole.

To address these demands, leverage the academic and research capabilities and addressing societal needs, the Ulyssseus Cybersecurity Innovation Hub at the University of Montenegro (UoM) establishes the programme: Ulysseus Cyber Security Science Shop.

The process of implementing a science shop project assumes engagement that in this programme is understood as: discussing, consulting, involving and collaborating with a community or stakeholder group in the creation of a knowledge product. The key actors of engagement from the side of Ulysseus partner universities will be students or students’ teams, studying the fields of cyber security, who will be creating knowledge through their seminal works, undergraduate or master theses, as response to the consultations with community partners and supported by their university mentors.

• Science Shops may consider working with many types of organisations during the project implementation, representing different sectors of society:
• Public sector
• Civil Society
• Business sector
• General public (non-formal citizens’ groups)

The Ulysseus Cybersecurity Innovation Hub at the University of Montenegro invites community partners from relevant sectors (see above) – located in regions where Ulysseus Alliance universities operate – to express their interest in participating in the Science Shop programme.

Through this initiative, community partners will have the opportunity to present a real-world challenge relevant to their work. These challenges will be taken up by interdisciplinary teams of students and professors, who will collaboratively research and develop actionable solutions.

Participants can expect meaningful cooperation with university teams, who will be fully committed to engaging with the proposed challenge. The entire process will be guided by the principles of the Science Shop model, emphasizing collaborative, participatory knowledge creation that responds directly to societal needs.

Please, respond to this invitation by October 26 2025.

Following the collection of community challenges, submissions will be reviewed by professors from Ulysseus Alliance universities and adapted into student project themes. During the 2025/26 academic year, students from the University of Montenegro, Université Côte d’Azur, and TUKE will select a challenge to work on.

Throughout the process, student teams will engage directly with the challenge owners – consulting, involving, and collaborating with them to co-develop their project work. This participatory approach ensures that community partners remain actively involved and that student research is grounded in real-world needs.

The initiative will be supported by the Ulysseus Cybersecurity Innovation Hub and the Community Engagement Team, who will provide structured guidelines for collaboration to students, professors, and community partners.

Language of collaboration

The partners are free to collaborate in the native language, while flexibility of working also in English when international teams are included, is advisable.

Milestones:

• Introductory Workshop: November 2025
• Creation of Community Challenge Catalogue: December 2025
• Selection and review of challenges: January 2026
• Ongoing Engagement: Each student team will organize at least three joint sessions with their community partner during the project lifecycle.
• Final Workshop (online or hybrid): December 2026