York wins £1m for equipment
Posted on 19 January 1998
The grants are awarded by the Joint Research Equipment Initiative which involves funding in partnership with industry.
The University has an established reputation for its courses in music technology, with many musicians, studio technicians, and audio designers amongst its former students. The £370,590 grant will go towards an advanced computer music machine for use in postgraduate courses and research. Terminals will be situated in both the departments of Music and Electronics. The entire project is worth over £1 million and involves a substantial contribution from Silicon Graphics, a major international computer company.
"This grant will enable the University to have the most powerful computer music system in the world," said Dr Tony Myatt.
The Advanced Computer Architecture Group in Computer Science has a grant of £523,687 for a major piece of computer equipment, a bid supported by Silicon Graphics Ltd which also has a substantial involvement. The machine will support research by allowing large scale investigations into intelligent data processing, which are not feasible on commonly available machines.
"Desktop computers do not have the memory size or speed to solve many problems of increasing importance in our research," said Dr Jim Austin. "The new machine can reduce the execution times for large problems from weeks to hours, and from hours to minutes. The largest machine in the Department's history, it will allow us to evaluate a novel technique based on neural networks being used to help GlaxoWellcome design new drugs by improving the accuracy and speed of molecular databases. It will also help the Post Office remove duplicates from address databases to make postal delivery more cost-effective."
"Other uses will include improved recognition of three-dimensional images, including data from medical scanners, and better aerial vehicle navigation using advanced sensing methods."
The Chemistry department will receive £133,654 for an instrument to characterise proteins and other macromolecules. "This will support biomedical research at the University and across the region," said Professor Rod Hubbard. "The machine will be located at the Central Science Laboratory at Sand Hutton and used by the partners of Bioscience York."
"This is excellent news for our researchers," said Professor Ron Cooke, Vice-Chancellor. "It is a further sign of York's reputation in research that we were successful in three bids for these funds."
Notes to editors:
- The Higher Education Funding Council has contributed more than £23 million for 68 projects in 27 universities and colleges in England. York received the fifth highest award of £1,027,931 for three projects.
- Bioscience York is a private/public sector collaboration which represents over 1,500 life scientists in the York region. Bioscience York partners include the University of York, the City of York Council, MAFF's Central Science Laboratory, Smith and Nephew Group Research and Nestle.