Research group websites
to engage the wider community
Research centre websites have a challenging role to perform, bringing research scientists together from different disciplines, often from different organisations, and not un-commonly from different countries. Sites commonly need to privide a focus for research activities, information for grant awarding bodies, the parent organisation, the general public, and offer a shop window to potential investors!
We work with our clients to develop and maintain a focus on the core objectives of the group, and can assist in preparing copy and background prospectuses for the research work being undertaken.
Over the years we have been at the forefront of developing tools for engaging visitors in the scientific content of our sites, with interactive experiments, molecular structures and research features. Typically these would be developed directly from you published work, making it easy to develop attractive and unique content for your site.
We can build in fully featured content management systems, add bespoke components as required, and offer an ongoing maintenance and support service.

TFI Network, 2021
The TFI Network aims to assist the foundation industries (glass, cement, ceramics, bulk chemicals, paper ...) to remain competitive whilst simultaneously facing challenges from environmental legislation and the drive towards net-zero carbon 2050.
The website includes a membership area where researchers can submit grant applications. The administration section is extended to facilitate application management by the network administrators.

Prof Mark Geoghegan's Research Group
We developed a new style for Mark based on his existing site, which had a lot of great ideas, but gone a bit out of control. The new design is unusual for us, with links ranged to the left of the page featuring little graphic details activated by mouse overs. The interactivity adds a bit of fun to an otherwise very clean design. The design is intended to permit the art work, that is an integral part of Mark's site, to stand out.

EPMM
The Electronic and photonic molecular materials research group is a leading research group working on these advanced materials.
Our client wanted a site that reflected the University of Sheffield style, but needed assistance updating copy and developing artwork to make the site stand out.

Designing Alloys for Resource Efficiency (DARE), 2015
DARE was an ambitious project to invigorate UK based metallurgy based industries, drawing academic partners from Cambridge, Imperial, Kings and Sheffield. Industrial partners include pretty much all of the UK's metals industry.
The website was designed in two phases, an initial 'quick-build' site provided the project with an online presence pretty much instantly. Subsequently we worked up a more refined design to include a logo prepared by Sebastian Conran Associates.
The final design includes a 'splash page' with a simplified menu to help visitors find what they want quickly. For this page we had a full page scaling background image of metal turnings ('swarf'). Interior pages have feature images, many of which are derived from the project members. Initial content was based on the grant proposal, permitting us to assemble a rich website quickly, without taking up the time of lead researchers while they were working on getting the project started.
The screenshot above left is taken from the mobile version of the site. More about the DARE site design in our news pages.

OMIC
The Organic Materials Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester carried out about 70 projects for over 30 companies for a project value approaching £2M between 2003 and 2007. The website was, however, broken...
We developed a new OMIC site with a simple design to assist future management. The new site takes newsfeeds from the OMEC website, and includes a number of stock graphics selected at random to provide visual interest on each page.

OMEC
The Organic Materials in Electronics Consortium represents a number of Universities around the UK engaged in the development of the next generation of optical and electronic materials.
First designed in 2002, the site is still very effective, so in 2009 only some small layout changes were required. Behind the scenes, however, we rebuilt the site in WordPress, which will allow our client to easily update and manage the site in future.
The WordPress installation also feeds news items to two other sites our client is engaged with, helping to disseminate research news quickly and effectively.

Functional materials by design
Functional materials by design, Prof. Mike Turner's Research Group's website at the University of Manchester. The group's research covers a broad range of functional polymeric materials, and encompasses the synthesis, optimisation and development of these materials for new applications in industry.
The site carries a research profile, and biographies of current and past group members.

The Centre for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (CBTE) 2002
The Centre for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (CBTE) drew on expertise in Engineering, Science and Medical faculties at the University of Sheffield to tackle problems in this complex area of applied science. We were active in researching content for the site, as well as in the final design.
The basic design remained unchanged between 2002 and 2010. We have researched and developed a number of new sections since that time, however, including an extended research section (with a major update in 2006).
In 2010 we re-built the site in the popular WordPress content management system. The new site gives CBTE staff the ability to edit content and easily add news and seminar information.
An archive of all websites by cookandkaye is available in our endorsements section.
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