This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from/to third countries not associated to Erasmus+. Students in all study fields and cycles can take part in a study period or traineeship abroad. Higher education teaching and administrative staff can take part in professional development activities abroad, as well as staff from the field of work in order to teach and train students or staff at higher education institutions.

EIDOS (EIDOS of a city: simulating the collapse and resilience of ancient Eastern Mediterranean urban environments via agent-based modelling) is an interdisciplinary project that will expand the research communities’ perception about the mechanisms that contributed to the parallel change and transformations of cities in the network of urban habitats of the Eastern Mediterranean. EIDOS will address important questions concerning the phenomenon of urbanization: why do some cities fold at the first sign of turmoil while others, seemingly similar, thrive; what are the dynamic, emergent and complex interactions between growing and deterritorialised (dying) cities within a meshwork of urban environments, from antiquity to early modern times? What components of an ancient city enabled it to be integrated and incorporated into cities of later periods, sometime spanning to our modern period? By combining historical and archaeological data with recent advances in computational simulation methods, EIDOS will significantly add to our understanding about urban resilience in the past. The training and research offered by EIDOS will position the experienced researcher (ER) as an expert in urban computational modelling with highly interdisciplinary methodologies, enabling her to significantly influence urban archaeology and contribute solid foundations to understanding the resilience of our cities.

Our focus of ERASMUS+ for the academic year 2016-2017 was the improvement of organization of the ERASMUS Committee following the upgrading of ERASMUS Sub-Committee to ERASMUS Committee. A New TOR for the committee was created and new members were selected. The Charge of the Committee is as below: •Oversees and keeps abreast of calls for funding and the relevant regulations. •Promotes and coordinates submission proposals for funding calls under ERASMUS+.•Approves inter-institutional agreements under ERASMUS+ other institutions for collaboration in student and staff exchange as well as collaborations in proposals. •Appraises applications for ERASMUS+ mobility based on the selection criteria set by the Academic Committee, ensuring a fair distribution in adherence to Erasmus Policy Statement. •Arranges dissemination events and information days for ERASMUS+. •Cultivates relationship with National agency and builds ties and partnerships with other institutions for collaboration in proposals, and student and staff exchange.To better integrate EPS into our institute’s particular needs the composition of the committee was also revised and three (3) faculty members representing each Program/Center and one (1) representative from the administrative personnel were selected for one-year term to insure transparency and an adequate level of expertise to appraise applications. The Committee has started their work by streamlining the existing procedure and the Office of Graduate Studies provided selected participants with full support in completing necessary documentation on time, travel arrangement. In addition the office prepared a reserve list in case one participant is unable to carry out the mobility as planned. The report shows that the successful implementation. The number of mobility has increased from the initial 6 (allocated) to 12.The number of hosting countries increased from 7 to 9. All academic supervisors for students were involved from an early stage to encourage their students to participate in the mobility. Students and staff members became much more aware of benefit of ERASMUS Mobility following the successful mobility experience share by their peer students and staff members. Consequently the Office of Graduate Studies had to dedicate more time and effort for frequent inquiries and individual consultations.

The project Modelling and Simulation for Engineering Applications (SimEA) aims to consolidate and upgrade the Computation-based Science and Technology Research Center (CaSToRC) of the Cyprus Institute (CyI) by attracting and establishing a team of outstanding researchers, led by a Professor of international caliber to maximally utilize and upgrade the existing facilities and pursue a program of research excellence and innovation. The SimEA ERA Chair will expand the research portfolio of CaSToRC to include computation-based engineering adding the missing technology leadership, collaborate with other research groups in Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean (EM) and internationally, enrich the educational programs of CaSToRC and CyI and set the appropriate mechanisms to forge collaboration with industry. The alignment of these objectives with the Cyprus smart specialization strategy and European priorities in Energy, Health and Information Technologies provides previously untapped funding opportunities for CaSToRC that would help sustain the team beyond the lifetime of the project. CyI strongly supports the creation of the ERA Chair by pledging a tenured faculty position and a grant of 700,000 Euro for infrastructure upgrades to best serve the research and innovation programs of the project. The international character and interdisciplinary environment of CyI, its strong funding track record, the attractive remuneration, job security and infrastructure grant offered are key elements that conduce to attracting an ERA Chair of the highest international standing. In turn, such a scholar will build a vibrant research group, bring competitive funding and spearhead entrepreneurship and industrial collaboration consolidating CaSToRC as a hub for computational science and engineering in Cyprus and the EM in alignment with the center’s mission to help the nation transform to a knowledge-based economy and to act as a gateway for advanced computing between Europe and the EM region.

Human skeletal remains can offer key information on diverse aspects of past life but, like all archaeological materials, they only give a glimpse into the life of past individuals; hence, a fragmented perspective into our ancestors’ lives. Their interpretative potential is greatly inhibited by the fact that such remains are often found fragmented due to several anthropogenic and natural taphonomic agents, such as funerary treatment, animal activity, soil pressure and others. This fragmentation severely limits the information that may be extracted from human bones in terms of metric analysis, geometry and morphology. RECONSTRUCT aims at producing 3D morphable models for the main elements of the lower and upper limbs of the human skeleton, which will be then used to infer the missing morphology of fragmented or incomplete bones. In order to achieve this aim and address a major current limitation in human skeletal analysis, RECONSTRUCT will integrate approaches from osteoarchaeology, forensic anthropology, biology, engineering, and data science. The results of the project will maximize the information that may be extracted from bioarchaeological research, contributing to a more comprehensive assessment of past life parameters. RECONSTRUCT will also have major implications in forensic anthropology since the study of modern skeletal remains suffers from similar limitations in terms of partial preservation as those witnessed in archaeological bones. Finally, the source code and raw data emanating from RECONSTRUCT will be made open access, greatly enhancing the extension of this approach to zooarchaeology, palaeoanthropology, and the prosthetic implants industry.