Members of the Modelling & Simulation Group have worked with consortia to attract significant amounts of funding and with SMEs to help them attract funding for the first time.

Recent grant awards

Cloud Orchestration at the Level of Application (COLA). Taylor PI Brunel (Simulation Application Development) (Lead: Westminster). H2020-ICT-2016-1. Euro 4.2M  (Jan 2017, 2.5 years).

This aims to develop autoscaling cloud services for a range of applications from event management to social media analysis. Our work package with Saker Solutions builds on previous work to develop a high performance simulation system for production and logistics that can cloudburst from a local desktop grid to scalable on-demand cloud resources (project-cola.eu). University of Westminster, Brunel University and 9 industrial partners).

Networked Labs for Training in Science and Technologies (NEWTON). Ghinea PI, Taylor CI Brunel (Service Evaluation) (Lead: Dublin City University). H2020-ICT-2015. Euro 5.7M. (Jan 2016, 3 years).

NEWTON aims to bring a new generation of STEM education facilities leveraging new learning techniques related to new technologies.   

CraftBrew Whole Brewery Management System. Taylor PI Brunel  (Service Development) (Lead Saker Solutions). Innovate UK Food Supply Chain. £600,000. (Mar 2015-June 2018).

This follows one of the most successful case studies in the CloudSME Project (see below) in which a prototype cloud-based simulation forecasting tool was created for CraftBrewers (BeerOpt).  This is being developed in a full cloud-based enterprise tool for Craft Brewers that will also enable the generation of optimal delivery schedules.  The impact of this is that small-scale brewers will be able to use high quality decision support tools that are normally only available to large scale breweries. (Brunel University, Saker Solutions and Hobsons Brewery).

Modelling and Simulation as a Service. Taylor PI Brunel (Workflow Services). DSTL funding through AIMS consortium. £10,000. (Mar-July 2015).

This small project enabled the prototyping of workflow services for distributed simulation, a key component of high performance simulation analytics. (Brunel University).

Energising Scientific Endeavour through Science Gateways and e-Infrastructures in Africa (Sci-GaIA). Taylor PI (Coordinator). INFRASUPP-7-2014. Euro 1,339,125. (May 2015: 2 years).

This builds on two previous ICT Africa projects (eI4Africa, ERINA4AFRICA). Sci-GaIA (www.sci-gaia.eu – see the project video at tinyurl.com/y8wpa3xh ) has focussed on promoting Open Science in Africa and has resulted in 35 new Open Science Champions being trained and 24 new user applications across a variety of sectors. The project has developed the e-Research Hackfest to train researchers in Open Science, associated technologies and applications development.  The project has also created several new institutional Open Access Repositories at key facilities in Africa.  Several African National Research and Education Networks and Universities are adopting these training programs. (Brunel University, University of Catania, Ubuntunet Alliance, West and Central African Network, Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, CSIR South Africa and 4 others).   

TransAfrican Network Development (TANDEM), Taylor PI Brunel (Roadmap Development) (Lead IRD, France). INFRASUPP-7-2014. Euro 1,217,983. (May 2015: 2 years).

Running in parallel with Sci-GaIA, TANDEM (www.tandem-wacren.eu) mapped out the new National and Research Education Networks (NRENs) being introduced into West and Central Africa.  We led the major stakeholder survey to access what services are wanted in the region.  Our Sci-GaIA project contributed about a quarter of the key services and training of the final NREN Roadmap for the region that will be adopted across the sector.  The survey is also being adapted and used by other African NRENs to access what their users want. (IRD (France), Brunel University, West and Central African Network and 5 others).

Delivering Drugs Digitally (D3). EPSRC Digital Economy Programme (NEM#2). Taylor PI Brunel (Conceptual Mapping) (Lead Dr T. Cornford, LSE). EP/L021188/1 £694,954. (Sept 2014: 2 years).

This is part of the EPSRC’s Digital Economy programme.  D3 attempted to map out the digital pathways that drugs pass through from inception to treatment.  We assisted in the conceptualization of the digital “translation” of the digital “footprint” of drugs as they pass through organization boundaries.  It is hoped that this help the NHS to understand how to achieve the goals of their digital agenda by 2020. (LSE, Brunel University and 4 others).

EMPHASIS: Economic Modelling of PHysical Activity: Simulating InterventionS. Taylor CI (Simulation) (PI Prof Julia Fox-Rushby, Brunel). NIHR (Policy Research Programme). £426,702. (May 2014: 2.5 years).

This project aims to develop decision support tools to assist policy makers in understanding the potential effectiveness of physical activity interventions to health.  It is unclear which types of interventions among which populations are more efficient as current evidence rarely compares interventions delivered in different sectors or accounts for population diversity (age, gender, health status).  This study has therefore modelled the cost-effectiveness, across the life course of an English population, of a range of interventions using an agent-based simulation.  Our high performance computing approaches means that a huge number of simulations can be run to create better statistically valid results (Brunel University with University College London, St Georges University of London and Oxford University).

CloudSME: Cloud-based Simulation Platform for Manufacturing and Engineering. Taylor PI Brunel (Product Development Manager) (Lead University of Westminster, UK). FP7-2013-NMP-ICT-FOF. Euro 4.5 Million. (July 2013: 2.5 years).

This project has developed 15 new industrial cloud-based services across Europe in many different sectors using a novel workflow/cloud architecture.  This project as led to the spinoff company CloudSME UG and continues to create new cloud-based applications.    (University of Westminster, Brunel University and 15 industrial partners).