ISP

In 2004 the Norwegian Research Council performed an evaluation of the education and research in engineering science in Norway. The evaluation encompassed all the departments at Faculty of Engineering Science and Technology (IVT) and a few departments at three other faculties at NTNU. Based on the outcome of this evaluation a "Curriculum for Engineering Science Disciplines" was developed. It has the format of a research plan and it presents nine problem areas where Norwegian universities should strengthen their research and competence over the next 20 years.

The nine problem areas are clustered into four strategic focus areas of which the ISP programme is built around. These focus areas are:

1. Energy production form the North
2. Renewable energy
3. Sustainable infrastructure
4. Food from the North

The ISP project involves the three major technology universities in Norway, NTNU, University of Life Sciences (UMB) in Ås and University of Stavanger (UiS). For each of the four research areas at least two of these universities are involved.

The ISP is firmly anchored in the strategic plans of the university, and in particular at the IVT faculty where Dean of faculty, Professor Ingvald Strømmen is project leader. The faculty has allocated a substantial amount of resources to the project. The main goal is to develop international research excellence within these areas and decisions and actions to achieve this are prioritized. The Curriculum for engineering science disciplines is the guiding document for research priorities at the faculty. This will also strenghten the MSc level education at the university.

Included in the ISP is a total of 34 PhD and Postdoc positions. An overview of the research topics can be found in the description of each of the four strategic focus areas.

The ISP candidates are performing basic research to build a fundament for the four strategic focus areas. A number of applied research projects funded outside the ISP project are already ongoing and will be initiated in the near future. These will provide realistic problem descriptions and research data to the ISP candidates.