Sponsored content: See inside new £9.6million University of Suffolk training centre

The University of Suffolk’s new £9.6million digital skills training centre, the DigiTech Centre on BT’s Adastral Park, is nearing completion and will welcome students in January.

The DigiTech Centre is a collaboration between the University and BT, with funding from the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

It will provide training in cutting-edge digital skills for people looking to pursue careers in the nationally important information and communications technology (ICT) sector, as well as fuelling high tech businesses who increasingly require access to a talented technology workforce.

Specialist high tech laboratories will form the heart of the new Centre, and will be used jointly by University staff, students and businesses at Adastral Park and across the region.

Professor Nicholas Caldwell, Professor of Information Systems Engineering at the University of Suffolk, said “It’s a joint initiative that provides a 21st Century centre for teaching digital skills and courses for the benefit of everyone in the region. It provides a venue not just for students who want to get degrees but also a venue for continuing professionals’ development or people who are already in employment.”

Once operational, the Centre will be used by around 500 students and 145 apprentices each year, with students splitting their time between Adastral Park and the Waterfront campus in Ipswich.

The University will be one of only a handful of universities globally to have the direct backing and link with one of the world’s top communications companies and it is set to help attract students from far afield.

Course leaders at the University are already working on a tie-up with police forces in the region to develop cyber-security and forensics training, but will also be used by wildlife and ecology students to study environment conditions, as well as those on the university’s other ICT courses. A brand-new MSc Data Science and Artificial Intelligence will start in January and has attracted many applications from international students.

Lisa Perkins, Adastral Park and Research Realisation Director with BT, said “We have massive ambitions across the East to be that leading ICT innovation hotspot. We have all the ingredients to make that happen. Not only will our future technologists benefit, our companies will benefit, we will create new businesses from graduates setting up their own start-ups. It is developing technologists for the future, growing the businesses and supplying them with the talent they need. It is all opportunity rich for the region and the whole supply chain that co-exists with that should benefit as well.”

DigiTech Project Manager Will Pryke added “The focus of this Centre is really to accelerate what happens with BT, and is now materialising in this Centre which brings together the commercial side and research side from BT, the wider partnership of smaller businesses on site and off, and the academic degree and further research. It is bringing that all together in one catalyst pot and that is really going to accelerate the capability in the region.”

To find out more about the DigiTech Centre and the course available please visit www.uos.ac.uk/digitech. For more information about the University of Suffolk, including the opportunity to take a virtual campus tour please visit www.uos.ac.uk.