Goldsmiths College: A New Cross college is set to create a cross departmental centre looking at how we remember, think and interact.

Goldsmiths College has been awarded a grant of more than £1.3m from the Science Research Investment Fund to establish the Centre for Cognition, Computation and Culture.

The cash follows a successful application to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which has made £600m available for investment in science research infrastructure.

Bringing together the psychology, mathematical and computing sciences departments, it will provide a major focus for interdisciplinary research into human cognition and its interactions with society and culture.

It will look at factors which influence what we remember, how we think, and how we interact.

Projects will focus on mixes of anthropological, biological, cultural, sociological, computational, and psychological issues. Goldsmiths warden Professor Ben Pimlott said: “This is excellent news for the college.

“The establishment of such a centre will enhance the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the research and it opens the way to work of enormous potential which is very much in line with the direction Goldsmiths is seeking to go.” Researchers in the departments are currently working on a wide range of areas including consciousness, motivation, developmental disorders, rehabilitation after brain injury, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence and also creativity in the new digital media.

Plans are already underway for the construction of a new teaching building on the college campus and the idea is to add an extra floor to house the centre. The college itself will be investing £700,000 in the project, bringing it up to £2m.

It aims to have the building completed by July 2003.