The Team

Academics:

Gary Wills is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He has led a number of JISC funded projects including the CORE project for virtual research environments. Gary’s main research interests are in Personal Information Environments (PIEs) and their application to industry, medicine and education. PIE systems are underpinned by Service Oriented Architectures, adaptive systems and advanced knowledge technologies. He is also conducting research into assessment systems, serious games and the use of mobile technology for learning and teaching.

Dr Simon Grange is an Orthopaedic Consultant Surgeon at the National Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. He is also senior Lecturer at the UCL Medical School. Having trained as a Doctor, and then as an Orthopaedic Surgeon in the UK, with various fellowships and opportunities studying abroad, he believes that much can be done to enhance the traditional medical environment for research, education, and clinical practice. He developed an interest in surgical simulation and his PhD thesis explored the subject of embedding such technologies into virtual learning environments. Research funding has supported the Virtual Orthopaedic European University (EU) and CORE (JISC) projects. Driven by the will to build bridges between the basic sciences and the clinical environment, which only exists as it does today because of the transfer of technologies, he champions VREs as the way forward in the UK and throughout Europe through the EU ‘Bridge’ project. He sees this as fundamental to how we develop both domains in this interdisciplinary era. The next phase of the work will be to strengthen these links by both deepening the understanding on both sides and broadening the experience of stakeholders who will manage the shared information in different ways with different needs and abilities.

David De Roure is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He is also the Head of Grid and Pervasive Computing at Southampton. David has had extensive involvement with the e-Science JISC Virtual Research Environments programmes and has a leading international role in Semantic Grid research. He is Area Director for e-Science for the Steering Group of the Open Grid Forum and is responsible for liaison with the Worldwide Web Consortium. He is currently chair of the Open Middleware Institute UK.

Lester Gilbert joined Southampton University in 2001 as a Lecturer in Information Technology as part of its initiative for widening participation and life-long learning in its recent “New College” initiative. Lester has published a textbook, Principles of e-Learning Systems Engineering, integrating his business-oriented practical experience of Systems development with Multimedia and Computer Aided Instruction to form the basis of his focus on e-learning and the use of technology in learning and teaching. Lester was the Principal Investigator on the JISC-funded REAQ and EFSCE projects, and a co-Investigator on the JISC-funded mPLAT, Remora, PeerPigeon, AsDel, MathsAssess, EASiHE, FREMA, CORE, and R2Q2 projects.