Bringing a Research Database to the Public
Future Energy Systems is the largest University of Alberta research program to date. With over $75 million in funding, over 40 active projects, and over 1000 research personnel around the world, this program is focused on enabling the shift towards sustainable energy alternatives.
We couldn’t have been happier when we were selected to work with FES on designing and developing their website.
Throughout the website, you will see over well over 30 custom made icons that help to highlight stats and distinguish the 4 main categories of research their corresponding sub-themes (ie. Improving Environmental Performance and Non-Electric Infrastructure). Colour coded sections, textured parallax backgrounds, and striking landing pages were all thoughtfully designed to breathe life into the program’s visual identity.
It was paramount to create connectivity between various modules so that redundancies in content management were eliminated for FES administrators – for example, by tagging news posts appropriately, they are automatically pulled to the relevant research category page and listed in the main news feed. For the size and complexity of this website, maintaining it is simple, quick, and painless.
The meat of this website is research related data. Our development team relished the integration with the University’s research database. From this central database, we import a variety of data-sets related to researchers, faculties, publications, and projects. We even created a custom Research Module which allows FES administrators to add further information to imported projects for the front-facing website; banners, galleries, and additional files all help to polish the project for the web.
Our team is thrilled to have built the online presence of this amazing research program. This beautiful new website will help FES put Edmonton on the map as a world leader in the education, advocacy, and advancement of sustainable energy systems – something we can all be proud of!