Global meeting of minds at Tyne hub
Nov 13 2008 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal
ANDREW Mernin finds out why the international science community is beating a path to the North East.
WHILE scientists are sometimes lauded for ground-breaking discoveries which change the world, they often face public criticism for undertaking trivial, and seemingly pointless, areas of study.
Research into the effects of jet-lag on hamsters, why toast falls butter-side down and the monitoring of a locust’s brain activity while watching Star Wars are all recent examples of such irrelevant areas of study.
And anyone who arrived halfway through a launch event at Newcastle University this week would have been forgiven for thinking similarly futile scientific endeavour was under way in the North East.
Delegates from the worlds of science, digital and technology gathered in a seminar room and were treated to an analysis of – wait for it – the moisture in a Weetabix.
But the numerous graphs and charts showing the make-up of the breakfast favourite were not the product of months of fruitless study by scientists with too much time on their hands.
It was, in fact, being used to demonstrate an initiative which is expected to turn the eyes of the world towards the North East’s burgeoning science and technology sectors.
E-Science Central is an amalgamation of revolutionary software services and online tools which will help small business in the region punch well above their weight in the global market.
The project could also attract major players in technology to the North East and will also be used to bring scientists from all over the world together in virtual laboratories.
“The end game is to improve the competitiveness of businesses in the region,” says Newcastle University’s Professor of practice David Leahy, who is one of four directors behind the project.
“There is a very wide range of potential users – we’re interested in supporting academic scientists, enabling start-ups to move their ideas and helping established businesses improve their productivity or move into a new product development.”
It is also seen as an incentive for businesses outside the region to come here. The project, which will initially be run as a pilot, is built around cloud computing technology – a relatively new phenomenon that gives businesses instant access to a huge advanced IT infrastructure at a fraction of current costs.
It has already won financial backing from American IT empire Microsoft and could eventually create hundreds of jobs in Newcastle, according to Dr Leahy.
For fast-growing small businesses, the initiative will save hundreds of thousands of pounds by paying for extra IT and data storage on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Similarly, large companies looking to enter a new market or launch a product will be able to do so instantly, making huge cuts on costs and time involved in expansion.
The technology – as highlighted by the university’s Dr Hugo Hiden through his research into Weetabix – also means data processing tasks which would usually take months to complete now take moments.
Joanna Berry, of Newcastle University Business School, says: “The project has been set up to prove we can use software as a service, open source software and information-based materials to provide an opportunity for regional businesses to achieve a competitive advantage against much larger organisations.
But perhaps the most exciting aspect of E-Science Central is its role as an open forum for scientific research from around the world.
Scientists across the globe can work together in virtual laboratories and share their findings with the international science community online through various advanced data analysis tools.
Meanwhile, the findings of studies which are deemed useless to one organisation and have been left to collect dust, can be accessed by another party which may regard the research as vital to its own development.
Businessman and Newcastle University professor Peter Gore says: “Often if small businesses get hold of data, they don’t know what to do with it and if larger companies get hold of it, they don’t have time to do anything with it.”
Prof Gore runs a business in Sheffield which supplies elderly people with technology to make their lives easier.
He believes E-Science Central could revolutionise the way his company operates by opening it up to research carried out by universities on the needs of elderly people, which may have been left dormant in storage.
“There are huge amounts of data collected all the time which is just left to languish on someone’s computer. This [new project] will bring all of it together.”
Microsoft backs scheme commercial arm
BEHIND the E-Science Central project is Inkspot Science – a business formed to develop commercial opportunities for the scheme.
The company plans to set up a permanent office in Newcastle as it looks to become a multi-million-pound firm employing hundreds of people within five years.
The business is led by four directors including Newcastle University’s Professor Paul Watson, a global expert on cloud computing who regularly meets technology giants such as Microsoft and Google in the US to advise on development. Prof Watson said: “The idea for generating revenue is that people will pay for access to the system. There’s been a lot of interest in it and Microsoft is putting money into the project.”
The pilot project will be assessed next March, by which time the operation will be looking for about £750,000 in funding on top of the £192,000 it has had to date from development agency One North East.
The firm is a trailblazer for other commercial entities which are expected to develop on the back of the ambitious Newcastle Science City project.
Science City chief executive Dr Peter Arnold said: “The idea is to provide scientists that come up with new ideas with the tool set that will help them work out what those results mean and it takes away some of the road blocks that might exist.
“It will put the North East on the map and will build up confidence in Newcastle and the region.”
Paul Duncan of HW Chartered Accountants, which supported the launch of Inkspot, said: “It has the potential to be used by
academics across the world. It will be great for the future economy of the city and the North East.”
