I suppose that it is time enough to tell everyone the good news: I have been accepted into the European Commissions new Erasmus Mundus programme under the particular program of MSc in Network and eBusiness Centric Computing. At this point, I don't have a lot of details per se, but I will tell you what I do know.

The program, which is a new addition to the ERASMUS (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) programme is aimed a providing higher level — Masters — degrees to both European and third country students, and promoting European study in third countries.

The European Commission has a bit of info regarding motivation and some of the more generic goals of the programme. The jist of it is, there are various consortia of universities that together offer a Masters level degree that requires study at at least two of the schools. The particular program that I was accepted for will have me studying in four different universities over the course of 18 months. There are apparently only a total of 13 spots available in my program for students outside Europe and Asia — and at most 3 people from Canada. I feel quite fortunate to have been selected, but above that I have been granted their scholarship for third country students which will total €30 000 over the course of my 18 months.

The different locations I will be studying in are:

1. University of Reading — Reading, England
2. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki — Thessaloniki, Greece
3. University Carlos III — Madrid, Spain
4. Trinity College — Dublin, Ireland

The only other information that I have on the program is that I start in October of this year and I have a pretty good idea what courses I will be taking were, because that info is outlined in this syllabus (PDF, 145KB).

Apart from that, I have very little idea of what will be happening when and the process to take from here. Apparently they are sending me some information by postal mail and that this information had been delayed from the central commission in Brussels. As I learn more, I will try to keep you in the loop. Up until now, I had wanted to kind of keep a lid on this information because I was still trying to figure out what I was going to do. So sorry for the delay.