Green Computing

Computing can be both a solution and a problem for a greener environment. Saving energy through reducing power consumption is a key stratergy within the University. Research into minimizing the energy consumption of a High throughput Condor cluster, where computers are turned off when not used, is underway. Computers can also be used to collect information on environmental impact and model the effects. Such as the MESSAGE project.

HPC / HTC

Providing the computing power for users is becoming more of a challange. As people's understanding of computers increases so do their expectations. The speed of modern computers has reached a plateau and more novel techniques are required to process the vast ammounts of data researchers have. We have been working with researchers across the university in solving challanging problems through the use of General Purpose Graphical Processing Units, Cloud Computing and High Thoughput computing clusters. Such as Processing Lidar data sets.

Education

Active research is carried out looking into the use of computers in education. This looks at both how users interact with technology and how the technology can be used to support learning. Work is carried out within iLAB:Learn.

Sensors

Sensors are the primary way that we get digital information. At Newcastle we are exploring new technologies for building sensors and colleting information through them. This includes augmenting a kitchen in order to determine what actions are being performed and for teaching languages, instrumenting cars to determine how people drive, recording activity movement or building sensors for extreme environments.

Visualisation

With so much information being available on computers these days it is often desirable to visualise this information quickly allowing people to understand the information more quickly or allow solution designs to be tested more quickly. We have a number of visualisation tools which allow researchers to quickly interact with their data or designs. This includes 3D printers, milling machines, laser cutters and a 3D visualisation cave. Further information can be found here.