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The Department of Computing and Mathematics has strong established links with industry and commerce. Academic staff work with organisations on a broad range of projects drawing on the Department’s expertise. The Department is keen to engage with businesses on enterprise activities to promote knowledge transfer and to ensure our courses are geared to providing graduates who are ready to take up opportunities in the knowledge economy. The Department is committed to enterprise. It has a track record of success in a range of activities from individual academic staff supporting small local businesses to a research group creating spin out companies exploiting ground-breaking work in conversational agents and artificial neural network based lie detection systems.
Here are some of the ways in which the Department has worked with
organisations:
KTPs enables small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to harness the expertise of academics on a high tech project to increase the competitiveness of their business. The KTP is part-funded by the Government and hence presents an excellent opportunity for SMEs to develop their businesses. The Computing department has a successful history of working with KTPs , and staff have helped companies to solve a range of problems, as well as winning awards for the software produced.
The Department performed well in the last UK Research Assessment Exercise, with world leading research being carried out by Computer Scientists and Mathematicians. Subject to availability, academic staff can carry out consultancy work based on their research and subject specialism. Recently members of the Department have been successful in completing work as part of the North West Development Agency's Innovation Voucher Scheme, which aims to support innovative work in SMEs.
The Department can deliver bespoke training in its areas of expertise; in addition it offers courses which are of benefit to a specific group. Recent examples include courses on Using Mathematica to Teach A-Level Mathematics for teachers and a customized Java course intended to upskill developers in a local SME. Individual units on the Department's MSc programmes in Computing, Digital Media Computing and Advanced Computing can be taken by individuals as part of their CPD.
The Department has a well-developed placement programme as part of the Computing Modular Degree Scheme in which students are employed by companies for a year. There is also a shorter student placement in the foundation degree in Enterprise Computing. Students in the Department have carried out many interesting tasks for industry as part of their final year or MSc project. These often involve web development for small companies, but students have also carried out projects within companies such as the BBC. We regularly receive requests for small projects from companies. We pass these on to our students with a view to improving their employability.