The chen.ist Summer School is the hybrid summer programme of the chen.ist Academy — the teaching arm of an organisation that has worked for over fifteen years on digital infrastructure, cybersecurity and open-source from Craiova, Bucharest and Stockholm. The school is the Academy’s most concentrated teaching format: each summer a small group of students, researchers and early-career professionals comes together for four weeks of serious work on the practice of defensive cybersecurity — and on the working culture that decides whether the work ever gets shipped.
What we teach
Our curriculum is built around six pillars: cybersecurity, cyber hygiene, cyber awareness, open source, project management and public speaking. We teach them not as isolated modules but as one craft — defending the systems a free society now rests on, in the open, with a team that can finish the job and explain itself in public.
The first three weeks are for teaching. The fourth is a five-day hackathon in which the cohort is given a realistic defensive brief and must, by the end of the week, ship a working project, contribute it upstream where it makes sense, and present and defend it in front of an external jury. The hackathon is not a competition for prizes — it is the school’s final exam, and the place where most of the lasting learning happens.
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
W. B. Yeats — a guiding principle of the school
How a typical day runs
Mornings are given over to lectures by working researchers and senior practitioners. Afternoons are spent in small workshop groups, working through hands-on labs and a single group project that runs from the first day to the closing hackathon. Evenings are reserved for invited guests, films, discussion and the company of the cohort.
The school is offered in two formats: a hybrid track that mixes in-person sessions in Craiova and Bucharest with live online teaching, and a fully online track delivered over video conferencing with a cloud lab per participant. Participants pick the track on application. Hybrid participants stay on or near the Craiova or Bucharest sites for the in-person weeks; online participants attend remotely throughout.
Who it is for
The Technology Summer School is open to:
- final-year undergraduate students,
- graduate students and doctoral researchers,
- early-career professionals working in technology, policy or research,
- experienced practitioners and academics seeking a structured update.
The Junior Summer School, held in early July, is a shorter and gentler introduction for pupils aged 15 to 18.
Where we come from
chen.ist has worked, for more than fifteen years, on digital infrastructure, cybersecurity and education for European organisations that value control over their own systems. Our team is based across Craiova, Bucharest and Stockholm, and our public work is built — wherever possible — on open source.
The Academy is the part of chen.ist that teaches: a small portfolio of courses, intensive trainings, microlearning sessions, hackathons and a year-round Computer Club. The Summer School is the most concentrated programme in that portfolio — and the Academy’s yearly contribution to public conversation about the technologies that now hold so much in place.