World's first professorship in Big Data Cybernetics

NTNU and KONGSBERG are to establish the world's first professorship in Big Data Cybernetics that combines the fields of chemometrics and cybernetics.

By combining chemometric and cybernetic knowledge, NTNU will ensure that analysis and decision-making processes are based on human concerns when large amounts of data—"Big Data"—are interpreted and understood. The current methods to calculate the interrelationships between different phenomena based on large amounts of data yield results that, to a large extent, don't give an intuitive understanding of the underlying causal relations. Theoretical and statistical methods will now be applied together in the new field of Big Data Cybernetics, and what we today know as Big Data will be translated into Smart Data.

NTNU and KONGSBERG aim to set a precedent internationally with this new interdisciplinary field and thereby contribute to develop Norway into a leading country for Big Data management.

Five-year professorship

The agreement involves a five-year endowed professorship sponsored by KONGSBERG. The Department of Engineering Cybernetics at NTNU will contribute with a strategic PhD position and additional operational assets. In addition, the world-leading chemometrician and professor ll at the department, Harald Martens, will play a central role in establishing this new field, together with the new professor.

"The Norwegian model with close cooperation between research and academia, industry and the authorities is essential for innovation. We look forward to working even more closely with NTNU in this area, and we genuinely believe it will give us knowledge that can be applied in our innovations", says Walter Qvam, CEO of KONGSBERG.

– At the threshold of an industrial revolution

"We are at the threshold of a development where the digital revolution we have experienced as consumers will transform industry. New production methods such as 3D-printing, network-based micro factories and the Industrial Internet of Things will drive this change. Utilization of smart data in production, operation and industrial solutions will be essential, and Norway must make a clear commitment", says Qvam. 

"This is a very exciting project with a unique theoretical approach to Big Data management. It is important because we need to be able to utilize the vast amount of data that is measured and stored everywhere around us", says Morten Breivik, Head of the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at NTNU.

"NTNU and the Department of Engineering Cybernetics is the first university in the world to offer a professorship in Big Data Cybernetics, and ground-breaking, world-leading research will be conducted. This position will make us able to educate new types of candidates at NTNU for advanced, research-based value creation in Norway. "They will be experts on interpreting big data flows in real-time", says rector at NTNU, Gunnar Bovim. For further information, please contact: Johannes Dobson, Corporate Communications Manager at KONGSBERG, 906 77 262, johannes.dobson@kongsberg.com. Morten Breivik, Head of the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at NTNU, 415 25 881, morten.breivik@ntnu.no