Sharing research facilities and equipment to promote efficiency and economic growth.
Together, the SES will explore how their shared infrastructure and training can be used to stimulate further international, national and regional synergies whilst further engagement with industry will be sought to promote economic growth. Underpinning these developments the group will also share major facilities for research in the physical sciences, bio-sciences, and engineering.
The universities will also engage in the strategic planning of new infrastructure investment for science and engineering research and explore the potential for collaboration with centres of research excellence elsewhere around the world.
In the first phase of development, the SES partners agreed to establish a database of research facilities and equipment identifying those facilities which are available for sharing across the consortium. It is hoped that, by encouraging greater collaborative activity, opportunities will be identified to establish longer term developments providing greater efficiencies in equipment procurement and utilisation.
The aim of the SES Consortium is to identify specific capabilities where the consortium is able to establish strategic developments enhancing their excellence and infrastructure, which the group believe will strengthen the UK’s international competitiveness in research.
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The Uniquip project was established at the University of Southampton, which partnered institutions across the UK, to define standards for the publication of research facilities and equipment data.
The project was informed by the early work of the SES consortium which helped to define the scope of the Uniquip project. This was a project, This activity provided the foundations for the development of the equipment.data project, which aggregates data from published research equipment databases which conform to the [Uniquip Data Publishing Specification] with the aim to provide a national searchable equipment database.
This national database will use the linked open data techniques developed by the University of Southampton and partners and presents opportunities for the exploitation of the infrastructure along with the future potential to align with and enhance data published through the RCUK [Gateway to Research] initiative offering access to the wider academic and business communities.
