Mission
The aim of the renewed platform is to build on the success of our first Platform Grant, to extend our impact further, and to extend the impact beyond simulation by delivering software tools that answer the science and engineering questions that underpin what users and applications collaborators really need.
Impact through people: The nature of a Platform Grant is that we focus on people, and on the support mechanisms that can be provided to enable them to succeed in pursuing not only the research plans we have now, but also the opportunities that emerge as the work of the group progresses. Scientific computing has been recognised by EPSRC as a “critical and valuable resource” via the Research Software Engineer program. We continue to furnish highly trained researchers in this field. In addition to the researchers directly supported by the grant, we are also able to influence the wider community of PhD and MSc students at Imperial, Oxford and King’s College London who benefit from the sustained critical mass of expertise that this funding enables and the open source codes we distribute. As a result, a large body of individuals will be deployed to industry and academia with a deep appreciation of the possibilities of computational modelling and the expertise to exploit them.
Finally, Imperial has recently established a central research computing service and appointed Prof. Sherwin as the director. This activity spans all faculties and departments at Imperial and provides an excellent opportunity for us to engage with the Research Software Engineering community at Imperial and around the UK.
Impact through open software: We strive to develop robust software that enables us to achieve academically excellent advances as well as publish these advances so that they can influence and be adopted by others, working on different codes. We empower new applications based on automated simulation capability, incorporating new methods and new technologies, embodied in open-source software.
Impact through widening engagement: We will continue to engage with users of our tools, and to develop applications projects and collaborations that realise the benefits of the technology we develop.
