Official Opening of National Instruments Academy in FEPS

Monday 4 February 2013

Over the last decade there has been a national recognition that people with doctorates need a broad range of technical and transferable skills to be successful in today’s labour market.  Employability has always been highly valued at the University of Surrey, therefore, as well as providing world-class research experiences for our doctorate researchers and post-doctoral fellow, Surrey is also investing in world class technical and employability skills training.  The National Instruments Academy is an example of this commitment.

 

In industry and in academia there is an increasingly strong demand for highly trained researchers, who also have practical and professional training in LabView, particularly in engineering and physical science disciplines. Without proper training, the standard of laboratory based code is typically poorly written, inefficient and in some cases it can even lead to errors in experimental data.  As many researchers are faced with tight project deadlines, training opportunities may seem both too expensive and too time consuming, therefore, in academia it is common for researchers to end up teaching themselves or to adopt legacy code which they do not fully understand. It is also unfortunate that this legacy code is often poorly written and when the researcher moves on they are poorly prepared for their next research position. 

 

By establishing a National Instruments Academy at Surrey we have been able to fill this gap in researcher training. The course “Essential LabView for Researcher” has been specifically tailored to the needs of PhD students and research staff using the well-established training materials and method developed by National Instruments over many years.  This Labview training through the NI academy is the perfect complement to the world leading research and employability skills training doctoral and postdoctoral researchers receive in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at University of Surrey.  Helping us develop researchers who will be able to meet the research challenges of tomorrow.