Research and Development
InfoLab21 is one of the largest and most significant ICT research establishments worldwide and holds Lancaster University's departments of Computing and Comunication Systems.
Research Themes
Our Research is organised around 8 major themes.
Research is particularly focused on advanced communications and networking technologies and their role in next generation internet and associated web technologies, mobile and ubiquitous computing and multimedia systems.
To complement this, research staff also work on advanced software systems engineering tools and techniques to support the construction of complex systems with particular emphasis on understanding the social and human dimensions.
Collectively, this provides comprehensive coverage of the major technologies and techniques underpinning contemporary ICT systems from lower level aspects such as wireless communication and digital signal processing through network protocols and middleware to emerging application domains and also consideration of human computer interaction.
Follow the links on the left to find out more about each themes within the Computing and Communications Systems departments.
Practical Focus
A key aspect of the research in InfoLab21 is its strong practical focus. In all areas, the emphasis is on building and constructing experimental systems and often deploying systems in real-life settings - in communities, schools, hospitals and businesses enabling researchers to get a fuller picture of the demands and limitations that their systems will face.
One example is the village of Wray, in rural Lancashire. Thanks to InfoLab21, Wray now benefits from access to broadband technology and at the same time provides a live test bed for computing, telecommunication and management science research.
Researchers in InfoLab21 also pioneered work on social informatics, including the use of ethnographic studies to shape the design of computer systems in the workplace.
Demonstrator
View posters, videos and brochures demonstrating some of the areas of research inside InfoLab21 in out Demonstrator section.
Collaboration with Other Disciplines
Lancaster University has a strong tradition of collaboration both across themes and across departmental boundaries, which is quite rare in the university sector and yet something which is crucially important given the nature of real world problems.
In addition to the Computing and Communication Systems Departments, InfoLab21 takes advantage of the many other excellent sources of expertise in the University, for example the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) which contains the largest group of environmental researchers in Europe and the outstanding Management School which offers a tremendous range of business expertise and management training. There is also active collaboration with the departments of Engineering, Environmental Science and Psychology.
