Friday 15 May 2009

New Research Themes

Had a very good meeting with our new PVC for Research earlier this week. Talked a lot about Research Computing and how it's funded and some of the issues we have with research councils who want actual hardware to be bought with the research grants rather than 'renting' time and space on our big High Throughput Computers. We also looked at other areas of research support that we're involved in particularly data storage and archiving.

As a University we've chosen three cross-cutting research themes to take forward at a strategic level and we're appointing new Directors of Research and Innovation to lead each of the areas. I think the areas chosen are exciting. They are :

Healthcare across the Disciplines

Energy and the Environment

Digital World
This is obviously the one I'm most interested in and will look at the technological, economic and social implications of a world in which information processing is cheap, powerful and ubiquitous. Looking forward to getting involved and working with the academic community on this.

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