A major investment for Northumbria is the new partnership with global aerospace and security company Lockheed Martin (USA), announced in 2022 with an initial £630,000 investment to support the development of skills, research and technology. Lockheed Martin’s investment forms part of a wider £7m investment into engineering facilities for research and teaching at Northumbria, funded by the Office for Students, the UK Space Agency and the University itself. We have already finished a cybersecurity project tied to that new relationship exploring the development of an Intelligent Vulnerability Scanner and Penetration Test Report Generator, for LM Space. We wish to investigate more projects and develop solutions based on artificial intelligence through Explainable AI or similar to provide a safe and ethical use of software and data to ensure confidence and clarity to citizens and business alike as stipulated in the UK Industrial Strategy.

Alongside the existing Crick and Oswald High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters, the university has invested in a new multi-million-pound HPC system and storage infrastructure to support research over the next five years, including major developments in cybersecurity. In 2024, Northumbria University partnered with global technology leaders Lenovo and Logicalis to launch the Higgs HPC cluster—an initiative designed to place the university at the cutting edge of technological innovation and research excellence. Named in honour of Professor Peter Higgs—born in Newcastle and renowned for his groundbreaking discovery of the Higgs boson particle—the new cluster will be powered by state-of-the-art Lenovo HPC technology. It will enable researchers to tackle complex tasks such as simulations, modelling, and intensive calculations with exceptional speed and efficiency. You can read more in the university’s official announcement here.