The research conducted at the Institute of Cybernetics in interdisciplinary. A common feature of the research areas pursued at the institute is application of mathematical methods.

Applied mathematics: approximation methods, inverse problems.

Mechanics: nonlinear dynamics, behavior of microstructured materials under dynamic loads, solitons and solitary waves, acoustodiagnostics, fractality, econophysics, acoustics of the piano, integral photoelasticity and photoelastic tomography, biomechanics, cell energetics, complex and nonlinear phenomena in wave dynamics and coastal engineering, application of mathematical methods in wave research.

Control systems: Nonlinear and robust control systems, modeling of control systems, learning and planning in robotic systems, formal testing and verification methods for distributed and embedded systems.

Computer science: automata theory, functional and dependently typed programming, semantics of programming languages, program analyses and program logics, ontology engineering in information systems, software process improvement, software composition and visual specification, tools for modelling and simulation and cyber defense.

Phonetics and speech technology: phonetics of the Estonian language, models of speech, synthesis and analysis of speech, speech recognition, speaker recognition.

The publication statistics of the research staff of IoC for recent years is as follows (as of 12 December 2016; the indexing numbers for the three last years are not final and will likely grow significantly).

The number of CPCI-S indexed publications has stagnated since 2011. This not because of a changed publication pattern of IoC's researchers. Instead, population of this the database at Thomson Reuters has slowed down to an almost complete halt.

The number of qualifying (ETIS 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 3.1) publications per academic personnel member at IoC was 2,3 in 2014 (at TUT on the whole 1,19, at U of Tartu 1,9).

IoC best papers of the year

The reseach activity of IoC was evaluated regularly in physical and engineering sciences 2010 as part of the research of TUT.

In 2017, this exercise will be repeated.

IoC's wave engineering lab participated in the targeted research evaluation of civil engineering 2008-2012 and was the sole group nationwide to earn the highest marks.

In the targeted research evaluation of ICT 2009-2014 IoC participated with 4 research groups whereof 2 (logic and semantics, control systems) won the highest marks. TUT overall participated with 15 groups out of which 5 were given the highest marks.

The research staff of the institute has earned various Estonian and international distinctions.