RISE August-September 2011 - University of Salford

RISE
Magazine
Heat, light, speed,
sounds and floods...
Welcome to the School
of Computing, Science
& Engineering
Cross discipline and cross
theme working is something
we do well here at the
University of Salford, both
internally and with external
partners and never more
so than in the School of
Computing, Science &
Engineering (CSE).
W
orking closely with industry partners on
multi-disciplinary projects, CSE, addresses
key challenges which face our society
today and in the future including:
the management of energy consumption; reducing CO 2,
emissions; water and its quality; the managing of floods
and pollution; examining the effects of noise on our societies
and environments and developing materials for a new and
sustainable future.
It’s estimated that households account for over 30% of
the energy consumption in the EU and 23% of UK CO 2 ,
emissions. CSE in collaboration with Salford Business School
are currently working on a large European Commission
funded project called DEHEMS. This project has carried out
one of the largest household energy monitoring trials in
Europe and is studying patterns of usage and behaviour,
to make recommendations on reducing carbon footprint.
Thinking smart and acting smart is where the solutions are in
energy futures and in another CSE project, funded by British
Gas, researchers in the School are pursuing how data mining
can be applied on half-hourly energy usage data from
Smart meters to understand patterns that can lead to
recommendations for reducing energy consumption,
lower CO 2, emissions and, lower bills.
Understanding and developing materials, applied to new
energy-saving and ecologically-sound contexts, remains a
major theme in our CSE’s Materialsand Physics research,
with a team of researchers working in our Materials
Above:
Computer, Science
and Engineering
research work
CSE, addresses key challenges
which face our society today and
in the future
Characterisation Group. This research group has a strong
track record of their work gaining significant EU and EPSRC
grant awards highlighting the importance to society of
their research, with a particular focus of theirs around the
development of safe ways to store hydrogen to use as fuel
in cars. On-going investigations into new solar cell materials
compliment another strand of research whereby new
materials and processing techniques will lead to applications
for a more sustainable future.
30 | August/September