The organisation

Durham University, founded in 1832, is the 3rd oldest university in England and has been a leading European centre of learning for 1,000 years. The University is currently ranked a top A top 5 UK university - 4th in The Sunday Times University Guide 2013, 5th in The Complete University Guide 2013, 5th in The Times Good University Guide 2013, 80th in the THE world rankings (2012) and 92nd in QS world ranking (2012).

Relevant skills/experience/technologies

Durham University is one of the UK's leading research universities and has been successfully involved, both as a partner and a co-ordinator, in a large number of international and Framework Programme projects (more recently in FP6 and FP7) including Marie Curie Initial Training Networks and numerous Marie Curie Fellowships. The University staff readily engages in international research collaborations through visiting and joint project grants awarded by the UK’s prestigious Royal Society, the British Council as well as the Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES) projects. The University hosts several internationally renowned Research Institutes that attract and engage best quality researchers from all over the world. The University is very pleased to have launched an FP7 COFUND-ed programme “Durham International Fellowships for Research and Enterprise DIFeREns” which will, in its 4-year duration, bring to Durham’s Research Institutes around 50 Early Career Researchers and around 50 shortt erm Senior Fellowships from all over the world. The University is part of a European-wide collaboration (ImpactE) funded by FP7 to further develop support for the professional, social and cultural integration of incoming and outgoing internationally-mobile researchers.

Role in the project: From M24 Scientific Coordinator, leader of WP6 and contributor to WP2, WP7 and WP8.

Interest in project results: The University of Durham team will be furthering their interest in the synthesis of models of systems architecture and socio economic models of decision making. An area where the team members have established strong intellectual leadership. The project will allow the team to expand and leverage their experience working on UK funded project in the European context and permit a greater interaction with European policy conversation. This interaction would be substantially more difficult and less productive without the project funding.

Key Personnel

Prof Julian Williams is a Professor of Accounting and Finance at the University of Durham and will act as the scientific coordinator. Julian has experience of managing large research projects for the UK government and has worked extensively in cooperation with industry partners and users such as the National Grid, Lloyds of London and Hewlett Packard. Julian is currently the principle investigator (lead academic coordinator) on the UK£1,58Million project Cloud Stewardship Economics financed by the UK Technology Strategy Board, in conjunction with HP Labs Bristol and the University of Bath. He has worked as a coinvestigator on several other UK and EU funded projects. Professor Williams has extensive experience in managing complex projects of this type.

Dr Iffat Gheyas obtained a PhD in computing science from the University of Stirling in Scotland. From 2008 until 2012 she served as a research fellow for the UK TSB funded project Cloud Stewardship Economics, led by HP Labs. Since March 2013, Dr Gheyas has served the Research Fellow in the University of Aberdeen for the Seconomics FP& funded Project for the European Commission, in the newly emerging field of Security Economics. Dr Gheyas has extensive publications in computing science focusing on forecasting and risk management.