RGU IDEAS Booklet

IDEAS RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Innovation, DEsign And Sustainability

IDEAS Research Institute

INSPIRE & ENABLE IDEAS is a new multi-disciplinary research centre encompassing the disciplines of Engineering, Computing, Architecture & Built Environment, and Art & Design. It builds on acknowledged international research excellence, exploiting the rich potential of the interfaces between these diverse disciplines.

It is designed to exploit synergy from these research strengths and to foster collaboration through a multidisciplinary research context encompassing key themes of • Creativity, Design & Innovation • Digital Technologies • Energy, Environment & Sustainability IDEAS will develop innovative knowledge and technologies that are highly relevant and will be used in practice across a range of applications and sectors.

The IDEAS Research Institute provides a creative research environment in which first class researchers develop and deliver high quality, leading edge research.

IDEAS’ mission is to inspire and enable • Excellence: internationally recognised research excellence in key themes • Engagement: strong research and innovation alliances involving researchers, industry, business and professional practice • Empowerment: an enterprising research culture that creates and exploits new knowledge and novel technologies Director: Professor Susan Craw

Creativity, Design and Innovation The Creativity, Design & Innovation theme encompasses a number of distinct clusters of researchers and established projects drawn mainly from the staff of Gray’s School of Art. The subthemes are: Art and the Public Sphere investigates critical art practice as intervention and reflection in the public sphere. On the Edge (www.ontheedgeresearch.co.uk) develops doctoral and postdoctoral art research in artistic leadership and public policy, contemporary art and the rural, ecology and public pedagogy. Ideas in Public Space (www.ideasinpublicspace.com) creates public art interventions, lighting schemes, that set out to test new environmentally sound principles and practices. Rhetorics of Practice is a practice�centred project that focuses on the function, role and status of contemporary art in the public sphere.

Cultures of Representation examines contemporary art practices in relation to the history of representation in fine art, exploring and exploiting the implications of the emergence of new technologies for new forms of representation as well as new contexts for the development of meaning.

Knowledge Through Making is concerned with understanding how the making of objects develops learning that is experiential. It builds on the foundations of constructivism, developing outcomes that address social purposes (www.makingsenseresearch.net).

Design led Sustainability is focused on the theory and practice of identifying and achieving sustainable design. By creating a thinking space for designing innovative products & services, we consider the breadth of social, economic and environmental issues. Our aim is to feed imagination through collective design thinking and making. The Centre for Design & Innovation (www.c4di.org.uk) is a project that focuses on the use of Design Thinking as a strategy for assisting SMEs to develop new products and services.

CDl Theme leader: Professor Julian Malins

Digital Technologies

Digital technologies impact all areas of modern life. Based in the SmartWeb Technologies Centre, our Digital Technologies researchers work at the leading edge of research in computer science and its applications. A key principle of our research is social relevance and much of our work brings benefit to science, industry and the wider public.

• Knowledge-based Systems research is focussed on knowledge discovery & modelling, textual data mining and constraint solving. This is applied to healthcare decision support, incident reporting, satellite fault management, well engineering, chemical formulations and multi-agent systems.

• Computational Intelligence research is focussed on evolutionary algorithms; probabilistic modelling; and parallel computing. Applications to real-world problems include medical treatment design and optimisation; concurrent mining of neuro-oncological data from multiple clinical centres; and rig operations data modelling.

• Information Retrieval research has a primary focus in four related areas: contextsensitive information retrieval; knowledge-enriched interactive search; contentbased multimedia search; and knowledge discovery and management.

• Cognitive Engineering research focuses on imaging, graphics, visualisation, cognitive & performance modelling and user interaction. Applications include user modelling, face recognition, augmented & virtual reality, telemedicine, and human factors in systems failure.

• Video Communications research focuses on the technology of imaging and communication including video compression, software and hardware architectures and high-performance digital communications.

• Information Systems has a technology transfer focus on how computer science research is applied to: business information systems, learning technologies, and user-centred information retrieval.

We are members of the world-leading Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA). Through the Northern Research Partnership with Dundee and Aberdeen, we lead the EU / Scottish Enterprise dePICT project, developing advanced software for industry. In RAE 2008, 45% of our research in Computer Science was rated as world or internationally leading.

DT Theme leader: Professor John McCall

Energy, Environment & Sustainability Within the theme lie a number of established research centres and sub themes.

These are intentionally cross-discipline in many cases, and all undertake leading and world class research in their respective fields. Staff active within the theme are drawn from Schools across the University, thus enabling research in both established and emerging areas of study.

• Asset and Integrity Management • Centre for Understanding Sustainability in Practice (CUSP) • Centre of Research in Energy and the Environment (CRE+E) • Environments for People (Architecture and Built Environment) • Oil and Gas (Well Engineering Group) • Renewable and Alternative Energy The theme includes cutting edge research concerning renewable and emerging forms of energy production; environmental detection; assessment; valuation; and, clean technology, which in years to come will have a significant impact on the way we build, conduct business, protect our environment and live.

The IDEAS institute takes the direct relevance and impact of its research as a central point of its work, working with government and industries including oil and gas, environmental and clean technology sectors, construction, architecture, urban design and energy providers. This manifests itself in activities including research-led teaching, consultancy, research commissions and research degree supervision.

Activity across all of the groups involved in the theme has consistently been rated highly, and includes world leading research.

The Energy, Environment and Sustainability theme is a fully participating member of the Northern Research Partnership (NRP) and the National Subsea Research Institute (NSRI).

EES Theme leader: Professor Pat Pollard

IDEAS RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Innovation, DEsign And Sustainability

Engineering Computing Architecture & Built Environment Art & Design

ideas@rgu.ac.uk www.rgu.ac.uk/ideas