Red Hat opens research centre at Newcastle University

The new facility is aimed at reinforcing investment across a range of technologies, including Cloud Computing, Virtualisation, and middleware. Students at the university are also expected to benefit from Red Hat-sponsored PhD scholarships, MSc placements and undergraduate project support.

 

Previous projects carried out at Newcastle University’s School for Computer Science include Professor Santosh Shrivastava’s work on the Arjuna transaction monitor, a technology which acquired by JBoss in 2005. The School has also contributed to the internationally-acclaimed work on grid and cloud computing carried out by the North East Regional e-Science Centre.

 

"Red Hat sees collaboration with academic institutions as a great way to nurture community relations and long-term research into future technologies. Newcastle University, with its tradition of producing top-flight researchers and excellent work in areas of immediate relevance to Red Hat, such as fault tolerance, security and cloud computing, presented a clear choice for partnering to establish the Centre. We look forward to fostering a close and long-standing partnership with the University over the years to come," said Dr. Mark Little, chief technologist, Middleware at Red Hat.

 

“This partnership with Red Hat acknowledges the quality of research at our university and opens up numerous opportunities for Newcastle University and the wider community. We will be able to tap into funded research tied to real product development and market demands,” explains Paul Watson, Professor at the School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, and Director of the North East Regional e-Science Centre. “Furthermore, we expect there to be a positive impact on the regional digital economy through inward investment, job opportunities and building a critical mass of expertise in Newcastle.”

 

The opening of the new facility isn’t the first partnership between Red Hat and educational institutions; the open source software organisation has previously partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science.