Bright sparks launch ’digital Britain’ doctoral centre

PA 284/09 The University of Nottingham has provided a foretaste of its new £40 million pound Horizon Digital Economy 'Hub', a research centre connecting researchers from many varied disciplines who will use their knowledge, skills and imagination to create computing applications to transform the way we live. The Horizon Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) launched with a bang at the Jubilee Campus in Nottingham at 3pm on November 5. The event showcased 19 high-achieving doctoral students already recruited to pioneer interdisciplinary research as part of the Hub, as well as presentations and exhibitions of work associated with the Horizon Digital Economy Hub such as the Mixed Reality Lab's Thrill research project. Businesses supporting the Hub and providing internships to Doctoral Training Centre students met academic researchers from across the University and joined Nottingham's Lord Mayor, Councillor Jeanie Packer, to explore the Hub's innovative research activities. A firework display recreated Horizon's sunburst logo, bringing the event to an end. The Horizon Digital Economy Hub and Doctoral Training Centre are funded by Research Councils UK as part of their initiative to stimulate the development of world-leading applications and technologies that exploit the possibilities of ubiquitous computing - 'blurring the boundaries between the physical world and the digital world'. The University of Nottingham centre will develop new ways to use the electronic 'footprints' we leave behind whenever we use mobile, internet and other digital technologies, and new ways to utilise digital technologies to help business and stimulate economic growth.