Background:

The National University of Ireland, Galway has identified Information Technology as one of its key strategic academic disciplines. Within the Irish University sector, it has a unique approach to development of IT research and teaching, recognising separate demands for:

The IT Department is the University's School of IT and has grown rapidly, since its establishment in 1991, to become the largest academic discipline of the University. The Department currently has 20 full-time academic staff, two administrative staff members and two full-time technical staff, as well as up to 15 part-time teachers and research assistants. The Department is now expanding its teaching and research activities in response to an increasing demand for IT graduates and computing research expertise in the Irish economy. As part of this expansion, a new £9m dedicated 4100m2 IT Department building is being developed on the banks of the River Corrib, with a completion date of January 2001. This will provide state-of-the-art facilities for IT teaching and research. About 35% of the physical space of the building is dedicated to advanced research.

Academic Programmes:

The core academic programmes delivered by the Department of IT are:

The Department also contributes to other programmes, including:

Research Activities:

In addition to the teaching activities identified above, the Department has an active programme of fundamental and applied research in IT. At present, we have over 15 research students and 4 full-time research associates, working on funded projects, pursuing MSc or PhD degrees. Much of our research is collaborative and we have on-going work with disciplines such as: Archaeology, Astrophysics, Engineering, Maths Physics, Medicine, Oceanography and others. In most cases research work is funded by either industrial companies or national/international agencies, including Enterprise Ireland and EU, and we have linkages with research groups throughout Europe, the US and Russia.

During the past few years we have developed a number of successful research clusters, which act as focused themes around which our research is organised. These include: Enterprise Computing, Distributed Systems, Image Processing, Scientific Computing, Networks & Communications, Smart Devices, AI and Complexity, Modelling and Simulation, and Multimedia. Our new state-of-the-art building will provide an excellent environment for research, and will have purpose designed accommodation for research laboratories and staff/student office space.

Facilities:

Jan 18th 2001: We are in the process of moving into the new IT Building where we will be able to offer further facilities and can develop as our needs dictate. Follow this link to see images of the new IT Building, in use since January 15th 2001.
However we already offer such facilities as:

• Four computer suites dedicated for IT students only, (total of 100 PC's)
• A dedicated 4th year BIT Project lab (37 PC's)
• A dedicated 3rd BA Project lab (11 PC's)
• A Network and Communications /Embedded Systems Lab (12 PC's)
• 1st Year MIT lab (12 PC's)
• 2nd Year MIT lab (12 PC's) (New IT Building)
• 2 Dedicated MSc labs (12 PC's) (New IT Building)
• 2 Dedicated NT web servers for Student projects running NT server, IIS4.0
• A Unix server, NT file servers, NT domain, dual bootable (NT/Linux) machines
• Hardware and software necessary for Projects and Lab work
• Three Lecture Theatres (500 seats in total) (New IT Building)
• Lecture Rooms (New IT Building)

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