ERPem features, benefits and achievements

Key features of the initial ERPem programme of activities include the following:

• The appointment of at least 40 new academic staff, including 11 new Professors, across the JRIs and the Universities, enhancing excellence and promoting linkages
• The achievement of critical mass of high quality researchers and associated infrastructure, producing larger, more vibrant research groupings with a strong international profile in each JRI
• Enhanced research capability and innovation
• The creation of the ERPem Postgraduate School as an international centre for advanced postgraduate education in engineering/applied sciences and mathematics
• The launch of the ERPem Prize Studentship Programme, open to international competition
• Joint provision of generic courses for research students as well as new Masters courses, exploiting flexible delivery and new wideband video-linked seminar/teaching rooms
• A strong commitment to research exploitation and knowledge transfer in all forms and to the development of an entrepreneurial culture
• A Core Agreement signed by the Principals of the Universities that underpins a joint governance and management structure combining a distinctive identity for each JRI, involvement of international technical and strategic advisory groups and the integrating role of the joint Postgraduate School, in the context of the financial and legal structures of the two autonomous Universities.

Major benefits of the new research partnership include the ability to:

• Increase the supply to Scotland of top international academic staff, researchers and graduate students
• Create world class research institutes with critical mass to compete in the global research arena
• Enhance the attractiveness of Scottish research to international research sponsors
• Bridge classical discipline boundaries and facilitate more competitive responses to UK and EU research funding and programme opportunities
• Enhance the education experience for PhD and other postgraduate students and for postdoctoral researchers.

A particularly notable achievement is the new significant joint funding secured by both Maxwell and Energy. Through the ERPem these JRIs have already secured new joint research funding which exceeds the total SFC JRI investment. There are active collaborations in other JRIs, such as ECOSSE which, when measuring both joint and additional funding secured by new ERP appointed staff, also exceed the SFC overall funding investment and in the future, for Signal and Image Processing, where significant new joint funding was secured after July 2007.