The Computing Department at Lancaster University in England is one of the leading UK research departments (Graded 5, excellent, in the UK’s research quality assessment in 2001). The Department includes over 25 academic staff and 100 research associates and research students. Following major investment from the University and European Regional funding the Department moved to a new, state-of-the art research facility on the Lancaster campus (InfoLab 21) in summer 2004. As well as research facilities this building also houses units for HiTech companies to work alongside academics. The special research strengths of the Computing Department include novel interaction techniques, ubiquitous computing and applying the understanding of social settings to complex systems design. The Department attracts funding from a wide range of sources; notably it is a partner in two of the largest UK funded research projects in IT (approx 15MEuro each), DIRC and EQUATOR, which are multi-site projects and two of the five Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations launched by the EPSRC (UK Physical Sciences and Engineering Research Council) in 2000. DIRC is concerned with dependability of computing systems taking a broad socio-technical view of such systems. EQUATOR is concerned with novel interactions between the digital and physical world.