As well as being a major player in single discipline science and engineering, the College embraces major societal challenges faced worldwide and engages in multidisciplinary research. Included are:
Digital economy
Energy & sustainability
Environment
Healthcare technology
Infrastructure & transport
Materials
Nanotechnology
Sensors and intelligent imaging
Sustainable high value manufacturing
Systems & synthetic biology
Underpinning capabilities www.glasgow.ac.uk/colleges/scienceengineering/research/
Addressing major societal challenges

The digital economy concerns methods & technologies associated with the communication and manipulation of information, including the secure management of databases and communications across mobile wireless networks.
The theme crosses many disciplines and covers the processing of medical records, remote sensing from space, the modelling and simulation of changes in the climate and the landscape, creating an integrated transport system and enhancing entertainment experiences.
Digital economy

Energy and sustainability
Energy and water remain two of the most important resources that we need to sustain in order to ensure our long-term survival on this planet.
Enabling the world’s rapidly growing, resource-intensive population to thrive in the coming decades will require that we look to new technologies associated with the treatment, desalination, recycling, storage and transportation of water.
In one example, our engineers are now working with aidagencies to develop low cost purification units for providing clean drinking water in the Developing World.

New, green technologies for improving the environment are being developed within the University.
These technologies range from the development of low-carbon industrial processing, through natural product chemistry to understanding seasonal changes in carbon cycling in the
Amazon basin, and the effect that this has on the global climate.
This cross-disciplinary theme is not just concerned with the development of new science and technology, but also involves understanding the social and political processes by which people interact with the environment .
Environment

The diagnosis of disease lies at the centre of improvements in our medical infrastructure. Examples range from low-cost, disposable biosensors for infectious diseases such as malaria in the Developing World, to the detection of the early signs of heart disease in more affluent populations.
Other heath-care opportunities, enabled by new technologies drawn from across the sciences and engineering, include rehabilitation engineering (with new automated systems helping patients with spinal injury to walk) and the use of new biomaterials to improve medical implants, promote wound healing in the skin and enable organ regeneration.
Health and Wellbeing

Glasgow has a rich history in transport and infrastructure, with a world-renowned engineering heritage that changed the world. This heritage includes inventions to improve the steam engine through manufacturing locomotives and building ships.
Nowadays, our expertise lies at the current state of the art, for example working with the space agencies to develop new technologies for communication and travel.
The development of infrastructure is also closely associated with the energy agenda, creating new algorithms and techniques to link a distributed green energy network into the national grid.
Infrastructure and Transport

This theme cuts across many science and engineering topics, including the development of new materials for solar fuels, biocompatible materials for implants and new plastics to replace conventional electronic components.
The field is not, however, simply about making new materials with extraordinary functional properties. It is equally important to understand how advanced structural materials break and corrode, using modelling and simulation tools to predict catastrophic failure in aeroplanes, bones and concrete .
Materials

We are at the forefront of the use of nanotechnology in a wide spectrum of industries including electronics, healthcare, security, photonics and renewable energies.
Our scientists and engineers are involved both in carrying out fundamental research and in creating a new generation of start-up companies.
Researchers and industrial multinationals alike now travel across the world to use our state of the art facility and draw upon our world-renowned expertise.
Nanotechnology

Systems and Synthetic Biology
Modern biology and medicine pose complex questions on how cells, organs and tissues interact with each other. Systems biology seeks to use mathematical techniques developed from within engineering and computer science to explore the nature of the signals that control life, regeneration, disease and death.
Similarly, synthetic biology draws heavily on both engineering and the physical sciences, seeking to develop rules that enable new biochemical pathways to be produced within cell-like structures.
The subject has recently received considerable media attention associated with the development of artificial cells, where several pathways are linked together to create new forms of “life”.

 Chemical Biology & Biological Chemistry
 Chemical Nanosciences
 Chemical Structure & Dynamics
 Inorganic and Organic Synthesis
 Materials Discovery and Functionality
 Physical Organic Chemistry www.glasgow.ac.uk/schools/chemistry/research/
Chemistry

 A major Chemistry presence since 1747
 4 Nobel Laureates from Glasgow
 In top-10 of 2010 Times Good University Guide
 95% satisfaction in 2009 National Student Survey
 Partner in WestCHEM Research School
Chemistry

 Chemical Biology & Biological Chemistry
‾
‾ synthesis of biologically-active compounds biological macromolecules in molecular biology
 Chemical Nanosciences
‾
‾ nano-scale molecular manipulation functionality through self-assembly & structure rearrangement
Chemistry


‾ theoretical, experimental and computational studies of materials from enzymes to minerals

‾ inorganic biology, molecular magnetism, polyoxometalate (POMs), nano-machines, total synthesis , medicinal chemistry, asymmetric synthesis & catalysts, organic materials
Chemistry

 Materials Discovery and Functionality
‾ materials for energy, inorganic nanochemistry, cluster chemistry, heterogeneous catalysis, biomolecular materials
 Physical Organic Chemistry
‾ Reaction intermediates, supramolecular chemistry,
Electron & proton transfer
Chemistry



A RESEARCH level link between Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde Chemistry
£11M of funding, 2005-2009, pooling initiative (from Scottish
Executive and OST)
 Part of ScotCHEM umbrella (unifies Chemistry across
Scotland; large critical mass of researchers)
 In top-10 in UK in RAE2008 on Power Ratings (Quality x critical mass)
Chemistry




£4.5M Centre for Physical Organic Chemistry
SPIRIT collaborations (£1.8M across ScotCHEM; 30 PhDs with local industry; £1M Crystallisation initiative)
£3.2M Programme Grant on Molecular Metal Oxide
Nanoelectronics
Chemistry

 Computer Vision and Graphics
 Embedded, Networked and Distributed Systems
 Formal Analysis, Theory and Algorithms
 Human Computer Interaction
 Inference
 Information Retrieval
 Software Engineering and Security www.glasgow.ac.uk/schools/computing/research/
Computing Science

Computing Science

Computing Science
 Automated management of large-scale communication networks
 Real-Time Video Distribution over IP
Networks Machine architectures
 System-on-Chip architecture
 FPGA computing and high-level FPGA programming
 Wireless Sensor Networks
Performance modelling of communication systems
 Parallel programming and computer architecture
 Modelling and Analysis of Networked and Distributed Systems

 Algorithms and complexity
 Formal modelling of complex systems
 Model checking
 Combinatorial search
 Quantum computation
 Computational biology
Applications from kidney exchange matching to telecommunications software
Computing Science

Computing Science
Multi-modal Interaction
 3D sound and Earcons in human-computer interfaces
 interaction design for older users and users with visual disabilities
 brain-computer interaction
 gestural and auditory interactions for mobile environments,
 multimodal, negotiated interaction in mobile scenarios,
Social/Ubiquitous/Mobile
 social and perceptual issues in the design and theory of computer systems
Accident Analysis
 failure of complex systems, including national critical infrastructures
 understanding failures in international infrastructures: a comparison of major blackouts in North America and Europe

Computing Science
 key survival pathways in chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) stem cells and novel approaches to their eradication
 mathematical and statistical modelling of Cytokine Receptor Cross-Regulation by
Cyclic Amp
 inference-based modelling in population and systems biology
 CLIMB - Classifiers in Medicine and Biology (Advancing Machine Learning
Methodology for New Classes of Prediction Problems
 Bayesian Inference in Systems Biology: Modelling Organ Specificity of Circadian
Control in Plants

 large scale systems development
–
Terrier- IR platform
 web information retrieval
 retrieval from blog and twitter data
 measuring the user’s experience (i.e. usage based effectiveness measures)
 understanding user behavior (i.e why users act in certain ways)
 multimedia information retrieval
 enabling collaborative search for video
 exploiting emotion for retrieval
 adaptive search interfaces
Computing Science

Computing Science
 “alternative” authentication mechanisms
– working on security issues from the policy perspective
– automatically choosing distractors for Doodle password systems
 dependable socio-technical systems
 Java Object Oriented Program Animator
(JOOPA)
 parallelization for many-cores
 runtime memory management
 novel analysis of program code
Mikon Authentication for Children

 Aerospace Sciences
 Biomedical Engineering
 Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
 Infrastructure and the Environment
 Systems, Power and Energy www.glasgow.ac.uk/schools/engineering/research/
Engineering

 Structural vibrations
 Dynamic modelling
 Non-linear dynamics
 Helicopter flight dynamics
 Unsteady fluid dynamics
 Helicopter aerodynamics
 Wind turbine aerodynamics
 Active flow control
 Computational fluid dynamics
Engineering

Engineering
Rehabilitation Engineering
 Functional restoration
 Exercise therapy in spinal cord injury
 Rehabilitation through function electrical stimulation
Bioelectronics & Bioengineering
 Environmental biological sensing


Medical diagnostics
Cell engineering

 Nanofabrication and multi-scale heterogeneous integration
 Integrated sensors, THz technologies and systems
 Electronic and photonic devices, circuits and systems
 Nano-CMOS fluctuation and Monte Carlo simulation
Engineering

Engineering
Water and Environment
 Systems biology for environmental engineering
 Sustainable water resources
 Fluvial and coastal engineering
Mechanics and Materials
 Multi-scale/multi-physics modelling


Unsaturated soils
Biomechanics

 Renewable energy
 Power electronics
 Electric machines
 Drive systems
 Motor controllers
 SPEED
 Power transmission systems
 High power ultrasonics
 Dynamics
 Shape memory materials
Engineering

 Earth-life processes
 Earth technology
 Environment, knowledge and development
 Extra-terrestrial and mantle processes
 Geographies of creativity and experiment
 Geographies of difference
 Political-economic geographies of justice and solidarity
 Surface processes
 Shallow crustal processes www.glasgow.ac.uk/schools/ges/research/
Geographical and Earth Sciences

 Interaction of tectonic and surface processes in coastal, glacial and fluvial settings
 Primary geodynamic and tectonic processes creating and modifying topography
Geographical and Earth Sciences:
Earth Systems
 Early Earth processes, early solar system evolution

Geographical and Earth Sciences:
Earth Systems
Earth-life processes
 Processes, feedbacks and dependencies in response to climatic and tectonic forcing
 Biominerals and biomarkers
Earth technology
 Modelling of processes at or near the Earth’s
Surface
 InSAR and high precision dGPS
 Geochronology, especially low-temperature thermochronology
Alkenones
Heptatriaconta-8E,15E,22E-trien-2-one; C
37:3
Heptatriaconta-15E,22E-dien-2-one; C
37:2

Geographical and Earth Sciences:
Human Geography
Environment, knowledge and development
 Indigenous environmental knowledges;



 community strategies for mitigating the effects of environmental change; gender relations in ‘development’ contexts; place-based social movements; struggles over inequity
Political-economic geographies of justice and solidarity
 Structural adjustment;




 space-economy of old-industrial districts; alternative political-economies; participatory and ‘empowering’ forms of urbanism; contested cultures of city neighbourhoods; alternative global political networks

Geographical and Earth Sciences:
Human Geography
Geographies of difference
The sociospatial constitution of ‘otherness’ with particular focus around:
 physical and mental ill-health;
 Childhood;


 marginalised communities in the Global
South; non-human animals; biotechnology.
Geographies of creativity and experiment
The interface of creativity and geography, specifically :
 public artworks in community regeneration;
 how social, embodied and emplaced relations shape the ways ‘geographical’ knowledges are acquired, transformed, represented and circulated;
 how academic knowledges are acquired through the grounded ‘performances’ of the researcher.

Scottish Universities
Environmental Research Centre (SUERC)
 A collaborative facility operated jointly by the
Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow
 Performs, stimulates and supports high quality basic, applied and strategic research within the
Scottish university community and, more widely, in the Earth, Environmental and Biomedical Sciences
 Host to five NERC Isotope Facilities providing analytical support to the UK scientific community

Main areas of research activity
 Accelerator Mass Spectrometry
 Environmental Radioactivity & Radiometrics
 Luminescence
 Radiocarbon dating
 Stable Isotope Bioscience www.glasgow.ac.uk/suerc

Applied Mathematics
 Fluid dynamics & magnetohydrodynamics


Integrable systems & mathematical physics
Mathematical biology
 Solid mechanics
Statistics
 Statistical methodology


Biostatistics and genetics
Environmental modelling
Pure Mathematics
 Algebra


Analysis
Geometry and topology www.glasgow.ac.uk/schools/mathematicsstatistics/research/
Mathematics and Statistics

Applied Mathematics
 Fluid dynamics & magnetohydrodynamics
 Integrable systems & mathematical physics
 Mathematical biology
 Solid mechanics
Example topics:
The biological control of pests
Stress concentration in membranes
Dynamic modelling of heart valves
Recent honours include the William Prager medal
Mathematics and Statistics

Mathematics and Statistics
Statistics
 Statistical methodology
 Biostatistics and genetics
 Environmental modelling
Example topics:
Bayesian modelling
Medical imaging
Air and water pollution
Recent honours include the RSS Guy medal in Silver, the Bradford Hill prize and an OBE.

Mathematics and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
 Algebra
 Analysis
 Geometry and topology
Example topics:
Quantum groups
Non-commutative phenomena
Differential geometry
Recent honours include two Whitehead prizes from the London Mathematical Society.

 Astronomy and astrophysics
 Gravitational research
 Nuclear physics
 Optics
 Particle physics
 Solid state physics
Collaboration with Physics departments throughout Scotland through Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), and with
Universities and Faculties all over the world. www.glasgow.ac.uk/schools/physics/research/
Physics and Astronomy

Physics and Astronomy
Astronomy and astrophysics
 theory and simulation of solar and astrophysical plasmas;
 understanding particle acceleration and energy release through the evolution of EM fields;
 low-temperature gas-plasmas for commercial use.
Institute for Gravitational Research
 spearheading the development of leading instrumentation for the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, on the ground and in space

Nuclear physics
 First precision measurement of charge distribution within the neutron at the Mainz Microtron
Optics
 Optical momentum, its foundations and applications, from making knots of light, showing new forms of quantum entanglement and imaging to the holographic optical control of bacteria and cells
Theoretical particle physics
 The world’s most accurate calculations using the theory of the strong force have given us quark properties to 1%, testing the
Standard Model of particle physics
Physics and Astronomy

Experimental particle physics
 the world’s largest computer GRID now exceeds 100 sites solving problems in Particle Physics, Bioinformatics,
Computing and Engineering
Solid state physics
 functional materials by nanoscale control
 advanced imaging and characterisation for development of novel polymers, semiconductors and magnetic materials leading to new solar cells, memory and much more
Physics and Astronomy

 Cognitive neuroscience
 Visual perception
 Language and communication
 Aging
 Face and gesture recognition
 Autism and sensory processing
 Sleep and biological rhythms
 Human-robot interaction www.psy.glasgow.ac.uk/research/
Psychology

 Molecular pharmacology and cell signalling systems
 Mental disease
 Sensory and motor networks
 Spinal cord injury
 Chronic pain
 Sleep research www.gla.ac.uk/researchinstitutes/neurosciencepsychology/
Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology