The Department of Engineering Cybernetics (Institutt for teknisk kybernetikk, ITK) has an international profile with a strong ambition to be one of Europe's most recognized research and education units within its fields. In 2012, an international committee on behalf of the Norwegian Research Council conducted an evaluation of 53 ICT communities in Norway. ITK was one of only three Norwegian ICT communities (and the only one at NTNU) to receive the top grade 5 and was rated "…excellent from an international perspective."

The research and educational activities at ITK include both fundamental and applied activities in areas such as automatic control and systems theory; estimation and optimization; cyber-physical systems; autonomous unmanned vehicles; robotics; ships and marine systems; process control; smart grids; offshore renewable energy; automated drilling; biomedical technology; safety-critical systems; embedded and real-time systems; systems engineering; and fisheries and aquaculture cybernetics.

The department is involved in numerous research projects and centers, including the Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems (NTNU AMOS). ITK has an extensive collaboration with both national and international academia and business. Over the past five years, ITK has collaborated with over 100 academic institutions and over 40 companies from all over the world. ITK also has an extensive innovation activity. Since 2015, nine spin-off companies have been established.

Key figures

ITK has 36 employees working in academic positions of which two are IEEE Fellows, about 15 adjunct professors, about 15 postdocs and researchers as well as 110 PhD candidates. The department also has a technical staff of 12 people and operates its own mechanical workshop and electronics workshop such that is can develop its own advanced prototypes. The administrative staff consists of 5 people. Approximately 200 candidates graduate annually from the three MSc programs in cybernetics, which comprise over 900 students in total. Also, about 35 candidates graduate annually from the BSc study in electrical engineering with specialization in automation.