Major HEFCE investment in Sheffield Advanced Digital Research Centre
16th May 2013
The Department of Computer Science has obtained a major new investment from HEFCE as part of a £50 million government boost for universities to stimulate the UK economy.
The Department aims to take a successful model for industry-academic research collaboration, the Advanced Manufacturing Centre (AMRC), and extend it into two important areas for the Sheffield City Region economy – healthcare technologies and the digital sector. Activity will focus on collaborative research and applied research and development, graduate entrepreneurship and postgraduate applied studentships.
Private sector partners include ARM, Zoo Digital, Wandisco, Boeing, Accenture, Mott Macdonald, IBM, Thales, Costain, Sandvik, Starrag, Carpenter, Mori Seike and Alpha rooms. The project has the support of the Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, a collaboration between the public and private sectors that aims to ensure the growth of a rebalanced local economy in the Sheffield region.
The award to Sheffield - just under £7 million - is for 4 activities. One is the setting up of a Medical AMRC. Another part is to support Assistive Technology in our Centre (CATCH). There is also funding for a network of companies working in healthcare technology.
Professor Mike Holcombe of the Department of Computer Science developed the proposal for the 4th component, an Advanced Digital Research Centre which will receive a little under £3 million. The ADRC will initially specialise in 3 areas - Software Testing, Data Analytics and Agent-based Simulation under the leadership of Dr. Phil McMinn, Dr. Mark Stevenson and Dr. Daniela Romano respectively. Following the successful AMRC model, we will develop a community of industrial partners who will subscribe to the Centre and will be able to propose specialist research and development projects to be carried out by the researchers in the Centre. By having a permanent pool of researchers the Centre will be able to offer short term projects which are much more useful to industry than the traditional 3 year timescales of research grants or PhD studentships.
The scheme also calls for new ideas in skills training and apprenticeships. Professor Holcombe comments that "Many companies are reluctant to recruit computer science graduates without some industrial experience, and this is an issue that is not fully understood in many computer science departments. Our proposal is to instigate an intensive training and placement programme in collaboration with a very successful local company run by one of our graduates (Alpha Rooms) to provide a 3 month course after graduation for unemployed computer science graduates. This should make them much more attractive to employers."