Research

The Institute for System Level Integration exploits its position as an intermediary between academia and industry to support research activities in system design and system on chip technology. The strategic direction of these research activities is provided by the Institute’s Board and Research Committee. Members include key academic staff from partner universities along with senior design industry managers and entrepreneurs, resulting in the development of research initiatives with both academic and industrial influences.

Established links with successful organisations such as Fujitsu, Wolfson Microelectronics, Motorola, and Epson and with innovative start-ups including MicroEmissive Displays, Spiral Gateway and Critical Blue provide a background understanding of the current and future technology needs in the design industry. This awareness of future technology needs is greatly enhanced through iSLI’s Engineering Doctorate program whereby researchers undertake fundamental research projects in industry on tomorrow’s technology.

In-house research is led by iSLI's membership of the Scottish Collaboration in Integrated Micro-Photonics Systems in conjunction with our partners at Glasgow, Heriot Watt and Strathclyde Universities and lead by the Institute of Photonics. Under this banner our research team are working on silicon MEMS devices and MEMS / electronic subsystems to enable the next generation of high performance, miniaturised and highly integrated photonic systems. With partner expertise in optical sources, MEMS, microfluidics and biomedicine a range of challenges in diagnostics and optical instrumentation are being tackled.

Further commercially focused research is also performed via iSLI sponsored EngD Research Engineers and MSc projects with additional support from the design team. Typically up to a third of MSc projects are provided and partly supervised by industrial partners. This further allows iSLI to operate as a bridging point for the transfer of knowledge and experience between higher education and industry.

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