IN BUSINESS Royal guest opens new building at Daresbury
AMEMBER of the Royal Family has officially opened the latest building to be launched at SciTech Daresbury’s supercomputing hub the Hartree Centre.
Prince Andrew, the Duke Of York, had the honour of launching the facility, which is a collaboration between Sci-Tech and IBM.
The building is occupied by staff from the Hartree Centre, IBM, The University Of Liverpool’s virtual engineering centre and the Science And Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) scientific computing division.
It is intended to boost the capabilities and collaborations at the heart of Hartree’s work and ethos.
The Hartree Centre is a high-performance computing and data analytics research facility founded by the UK Government.
Its focus is on research in high-performance computing and data-centric cognitive computing with the goal of developing technology to encourage economic improvement with companies in the UK.
The Hartree Centre works with academic researchers and companies in a wide range of industries and joint projects include one between IBM and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital to create the UK’s first ‘cognitive hospital’, using the IBM Watson computing platform to improve patients’ experience.
Prince Andrew, a patron for SciTech Daresbury, stepped down from his role as trade envoy in 2011 after a string of scandals.
During his visit to Halton, he heard from Hartree Centre users and observed demonstrations of the centre’s projects and capabilities.
John Downes, group managing director of Langtree and chairman of the Sci-Tech Daresbury joint venture company, said: “The Hartree Centre is at the heart of our ambition, helping to facilitate collaboration to maximise the impact of our research base to enable business innovation and ultimately societal transformation.
“Over recent years the Hartree Centre has achieved many successes and enabled many projects and as it moves into phase three it will increase the momentum to ensure science, innovation and industrial strength are intrinsically linked.
“The new building, and this new phase in the collaborative relationship with IBM is a big step forward.
“Co-locating researchers and technical teams from both organisations ● and others means the Hartree Centre’s capabilities to innovate and help UK businesses take advantage of home-grown technical advances are further secured.
“The Duke Of York’s visit is a reflection of his commitment to the sector and to the collaborative efforts at the Hartree Centre.
“We are delighted that he has taken so much time to understand how regional SMEs are working successfully with universities and big corpo- rations to advance their ideas and enhance the innovation culture.”
Bill Kelleher, IBM UK and Ireland chief executive, said: “IBM greatly values the close partnership and collaboration with teams at Sci-Tech Daresbury and the Government’s Science And Technology Facilities Council.
“The opening of this centre, where IBM research staff will work alongside researchers from other organisations to develop tools for companies to use as part of a push towards technologi- cal leadership, is evidence of the quality of work that has already come out of this partnership.
“Working with our colleagues at Sci-Tech Daresbury, we will find ways for UK businesses to take advantage of cognitive data centric computing techniques, new OpenPOWER based systems, advanced modelling and simulation, open innovation approaches and data analysis tools to enable growth and leadership on a global scale.”