Today, we spent the entire day at the University of Nicosia (UNIC). While at the university, we had a meeting with representatives from a fleet management company and some lectures from a professor at UNIC and its CEO. The company that we met with does not own any of their own ships. Their job is to be the “technical management” of ships and to manage the day-to-day operations on ships that are not their own. They have many clients in Europe and a few in the U.S. Their company has many different departments: safety and quality, technical, training, crewing, accounts, and purchasing.

The first lecture we had was give by the UNIC CEO. He gave a lecture on crypto currency, like Bitcoin. He explained crypto currency in such a way that made it easy to understand and interesting for everyone. He first told us that UNIC is the first university to accept Bitcoin for tuition, which is pretty amazing. He then explained what crypto currency is. Crypto is a permission-less system that protects one’s assets. It uses irreversible payments, like cash and unlike credit cards, which are reversible and take days to wire transfer. He continued to say how centralized, permissioned money is dangerous. It can cut off people the leader disagrees with, and allows someone’s rights to be decided by executives or people in charge.

The second and last lecture we had was on data forecasting. Data forecasting uses statistical patterns to predict future events. A common example of this is a weather forecast. However, it can also be used for much more than this. For example, stores like Walmart use it to predict which products are going to be in higher demand in the future so the company can make sure it has these products for purchase in its stores. Even a 1% increase in accuracy of forecasting can save millions of dollars.