CERIDES conducts Working Visit and Meeting at CYCLOPS

February 14, 2022
Pierantonios Papazoglou

On 14th February 2022, a CERIDES-representation, comprising Director – Prof. George Boustras and Research-&-Strategy-Manager Mr. Pierantonios Papazoglou, conducted a Working Visit at CYCLOPS.

Just over two years of growing commonly-beneficial collaboration of the U.S. with the Republic of Cyprus in the field of Security, and just over one year after the groundbreaking of CYCLOPS in January 2021, today’s Working Visit of CERIDES is extremely timely.

The “CYCLOPS: Cyprus Center for Land, Open-Seas, and Port-Security” allows the U.S. and the Republic of Cyprus to expand the aforementioned collaboration and to pursue this regional Training-Hub, with the overall goal to address and restrain risks related to malevolent (regional) actors and violent extremist organizations. As such, CYCLOPS will foster Safety and Security related capacity-building, thus enhancing technical assistance to nations in the region, in the fields of border security, export and customs controls, port security, maritime security, and cybersecurity. In the CYCLOPS partnership, the U.S. provides facilities, equipment, trainers, and other capacity-building, while the Republic of Cyprus provides land, (travel) facilitations, and trainers.

The CERIDES expertise in Risk and Decision Sciences, as well as overall Safety-Science and Security, are therefore valuably pertinent. To that end, the representatives of CERIDES had the opportunity to not only tour the CYCLOPS facilities, but also to briefly discuss potential interactions and synergies within the scope of educational and training activities, as well as joint projects and other endeavours.