A team at DCU has found a new way to promote Ireland by using the Internet. Dick Ahlstrom reports.
Need a chemical engineer? Want to locate a physicist interested in cosmology? Looking for a social scientist who can speak Irish? You can find them fast on a new Internet "portal" site scheduled to open next month.
The new site will provide exactly what it says on the address, www.expertiseireland.com, and should help scientists, business people and anyone looking for skills in Irish universities find what they want quickly and easily, according to the expertiseireland project director, Prof Conor Long.
Former dean of science and working in the department of chemistry at Dublin City University, Long is the point man for the project. It follows a similar exercise completed by DCU to promote its own pool of expertise and running on system for the past two years, says Long.
The idea to produce a single web site for all of the Irish universities North and South originated with CHIU (Conference of the Heads of Irish Universities). It seemed like such a good idea that InterTradeIreland, the cross-Border trade and business development body, became involved and provided the funding to make expertiseireland a reality, explains Long.
"The purpose is to showcase the expertise that exists within the island," he says. "It will serve as a one-stop-shop for access to expertise. It is also useful for companies and business users as well."
He sees it working something like a "yellow pages for expertise" that will help researchers and business people get in touch with academics in the universities. "Potentially all academics in the institutions could be in it, and also staff in State research bodies."
It would provide a way for scientists in other EU states to locate suitable research partners for involvement in Framework Programme 6 activities. These generally require the formation of international teams and the portal would help make these links.
DCU developed the original system in conjunction with Manchester company infoEd, a UK firm linked to a US company that specialises in software systems for managing research activity. Originally designed to handle scientific research, it can just as well be used to catalogue academics in any field.
The software and systems originally designed for DCU are now being applied at all but one of the universities on this island, providing a unified system that operates in the same way on all campuses. Long believes this makes it one of the most advanced on-line portals of its kind in Europe, an approach now being examined by London's universities.
There is a "research support system" at each university used to catalogue information about local expertise. "We have classified the data very carefully," says Long with a variety of key words so that anyone interrogating the system can achieve a quick and high quality match.
The portal system sits above these campus systems and provides the search facilities needed to link quickly to a given researcher. Each night the portal system automatically gets in touch with each campus system, uploading all the files so the portal carries the most up to date information on staff. In this way it only takes a single day for any changes to be updated on the portal system.
A profile of each logged academic is available including contact information and research project involvement. Other categories include a list of publications, membership of professional associations, consultancy activities and registered patents.
There will be a news section when the portal opens, he says. "We are also offering a bulletin board and news features of relevance to researchers and the business community."
If a user is looking for something unusual, say an analytical chemist with experience in new materials, but fails to find someone, the user can leave contact details behind. If such a person then joins the staff of one of the universities, the system will automatically e-mail the user alerting them to the change.
While the system will initially support scientific researchers, Long sees it expanding into other fields fairly quickly. He also sees the institutes of technology becoming involved. "The institutes are aware of the development and are supportive of it but haven't moved yet to participate in it. We hope they will soon," he says.
The web address, www.expertiseireland.com is open but does not yet provide a service. It is scheduled to come into service next month.