Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute

southampton universityThe University of Southampton (UoS) is one of the leading universities in the United Kingdom, was founded in 1952 and is a member of prestigious Russell Group of UK Universities. Southampton has more than 16,000 undergraduate students and 7,000 postgraduates and is an excellent venue for conducting cutting-edge research and for providing high quality education. The university is truly international, drawing students from over 130 different countries and benefiting from a wide and varied culture. It is ranked in the top 100 universities worldwide (QS world university rankings 2016-17) and in the top 15 of research led universities in the UK (REF 2014), and is participating in a high number of collaborative research projects and related initiatives. Southampton has a successful track record of industrial collaborations and is at the centre of a cluster of local high technology companies. It has an enviable track record in the generation of patentable work, with a portfolio of over 350 patents. To ensure the impact of its research projects, University of Southampton’s Research & Innovation Services (R&IS) is responsible for professional protection of IP and supporting commercial development with industry. R&IS has had considerable success, licensing annual revenue in excess of €1million and launching 12 successful spin-out companies since 2000.

Southampton has also a strong record of accomplishment of working in European projects, especially within the Framework Programme. The EC 7th FP7 Monitoring Report ranked Southampton 15th out of all higher and secondary education organisations for number of participations during 2007-2013. Throughout the FP7 Southampton has received over €125M in research grants and has been involved in 318 projects, including 17 HEALTH, 63 ICT, 8 INFRASTRUCTURES, 10 NMP, 7 ENERGY, 12 ENVIRONMENT, 17 AAT, 11 SST and 5 SPACE Collaborative Projects. Since the start of H2020 Southampton has been awarded 86 grants worth over €55M. In 2014/15 alone, Southampton has received over €180M in research grants and contracts.

Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) is a unique, internationally recognised centre of excellence for research, innovation and education. Our work spans both the natural ocean environment (marine) and human use of the sea (maritime). We are a community of over 500 scholars from across the University of Southampton, whose interests and research are linked to the marine/maritime realm. By working across the traditional disciplinary divides, we can better address some of today’s global marine & maritime challenges.

Our scholars work addresses four grand challenge themes as below.

Trade and transport is transforming the safety of ships, the goods they transport, and for crew and passengers too. Our work encompasses technological aspects, working towards safe shipping and ship designs, legal instruments governing shipping management, logistics and supply chain management and the underlying impact of the maritime trade driven economics on the nation states’ welfare.

Our expertise in Society and Government domain includes issues relating to governance and planning in coastal regions owing to climate change patterns, technological innovations to ensure the safety of people, tourism and leisure activities, to the historical evolution of societies in port cities.

Our interests in Energy and Resources range from understanding of the basic sciences influencing the search for energy and seabed resources, the technology for managing and extracting them and the legal instruments for exploiting such resources.

Our expertise in Climate and the Environment covers the basic sciences explaining the behaviour of the environment and the search for resources from it, and developing the state of art technologies for managing and extracting the resources, to the legal instruments defining the use of the maritime and ocean space.

The SMMI will participate extensively within the WP3 activities reviewing the business plan, lead Task 3.2 sustainability plan and funding opportunities and will conduct the “Workshop UK” showcasing successful examples of innovative services to the marine and maritime economy.

www.southampton.ac.uk