Computer Science History: 2000s

In 2000, the Distributed Systems Research group led by Professor Shrivastava was awarded the BCS Technical Achievement Award. It was given the award for its development of the Arjuna middleware system.

This meant the department joined Cambridge University Computing Laboratory as the only university groups to have won the award on two occasions.

The group also established a spin-out company, Arjuna Solutions. Arjuna Solutions was later sold to an American company, Bluestone Inc. for $13m. Bluestone was then acquired by Hewlett Packard (HP). This led to the establishment of an HP research laboratory in Newcastle.

HP made changes to the strategy for middleware. This led to the original founders forming Arjuna Technologies. They are now based on the University campus to further develop their technologies in the areas of web and cloud computing.

In 2008 Arjuna's transaction software was sold to the middleware supplier JBoss, which was in turn acquired by RedHat. Both Arjuna and RedHat middleware research laboratories are located on campus.

The new millennium saw the School adopt a broader perspective in both research and teaching.

In 2001 the School became home to one of the Joint Research Council's Regional e-science centres. Professor Watson directed and led the collaboration with a range of science and engineering departments and with other North-East universities, particularly in developing and exploiting web and cloud computing.

The rapidly growing field of bio-informatics became a particular strength under Professor Wipat.

The School also became the co-ordinator of one of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's (EPSRC) interdisciplinary research collaborations. This is directed by Professor Jones. The Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability (DIRC) built on the long history of related research at Newcastle. It addressed in particular the human element of dependability.

The North East Regional e-science Centre (NEReSC) was established in July 2001. It was funded by the EPSRC and the Department of Trade and Industry through the UK Core e-Science programme. It received funding to give expertise in e-Science and to instigate and run a set of industrially focused projects.

The aims of the centre were to:

• become a centre of excellence in e-Science
• start and manage a £1m programme of industrially focused projects with matching industrial contributions
• act as a first point of contact for e-science in the region, for companies and university research groups
• develop specialist expertise in database-intensive computing on the Grid
• develop communication, awareness and training activities in e-Science related fields
• take part in a national grid of computing/data resources and facilities.

As part of the restructuring process the University established many research institutes.

One of the institutes was the Informatics Research Institute, led by Professor Harrison. The Informatics Research Institute has since been renamed Digital Institute and is directed by Professor Watson.

The main focus of the institute has been on the experience of users of computing systems. This culminated in the award of a major grant for the Social Inclusion for the Digital Economy project. This was led by Professor Watson, working with colleagues at the University of Dundee.

This work has been facilitated by the existence of Open Lab.

With the support of Northumbria Police the School established the Centre for CyberCrime and Computer Security. It was directed by Professor van Moorsel, who had joined the School in 2004 from Hewlett Packard.

In 2006 Professor Lee succeeded Dr Lloyd as Head of School. Professor Lee presided over a broadening of the spectrum of degree programmes and a large expansion of student numbers.

There are now variants of the BSc in Computing Science. Specialisms include Distributed Systems, Software Engineering, and Games and Virtual Environments.

Masters degree programmes are now offered in:

• Computer Security and Resilience
• Bio-Informatics
• E-Business and Information Systems
• Games Engineering
• Cloud Computing
• a more general MSc in Advanced Computer Science

The School received a HEFCE Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning award for a project directed by Dr (now Professor) Phillips. It enabled development of innovative approaches to group project activity.