Facilities
Lecture halls and labs
Lectures are a key part of your student experience. You will normally
follow a large lecture with a smaller seminar or tutorial, where you can
discuss topics from the lecture in greater detail with your tutor and fellow
students.
Our 1000-seater Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall is used for large lectures and
big events, such as our graduation ceremonies in July. This impressive
stainless steel building has won three prestigious architectural awards for
its intricate design.
We also have a second lecture theatre building which includes ten lecture
rooms ranging from 360 or more seats in size, as well as film screening
facilities for use during lectures and for Students’ Union activities, like
the Film Society.
Our state-of-the-art laboratories are used by those studying science
subjects, such as computing and electronics, health, biological sciences or
psychology.
Our School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering provides six
laboratories for use by its students, which includes facilities for teaching
and research in brain-computer interfaces, embedded systems, computers and
networks, photonics and a renowned robotics lab and arena. Our School is
justly famous for its research into robotics, with staff expertise spanning
the entire range of intelligent systems and experience of developing robots
intended for land, under water and in the air. Research carried out by this
team has resulted in appearances in the Robot Soccer World Cup final, an
autonomous robot fish in the London Aquarium, as well as robotic fish used
for detecting pollution at sea, and a self-programming computer vision
system.
Our School of Health and Human Sciences has state-of-the-art clinical
laboratories with the very latest equipment and IT facilities. This
includes, at our Southend Campus, a dental skills lab with ‘phantom heads’
to practice on and a 20-chair dental education unit.
Recent investment in our Department of Biological Sciences has provided
modern facilities for imaging biological systems, transcriptomics,
proteomics and bioinformatics. Our Coral Reef Research Unit now has a
£50,000 aquarium to address key research questions under controlled
laboratory conditions, and we have technical/post-doctoral staff who provide
a service to all our staff and students.
Our Department of Psychology has extensive laboratory space for
experimental psychology and special facilities for visual and auditory
perception, developmental psychology and social psychology, with our Hearing
Research Laboratory and our Visual Perception Unit. We also have a
state-of-the-art research facility dedicated to the study of brain activity
in relation to psychological processes. This provides a dynamic resource for
psychology and neuroscience, with specialised laboratories for investigating
brain activity and behaviour.
Our language students also benefit from our Department of Language and
Linguistics’ two multimedia language teaching laboratories which have
state-of-the-art Sanako and Melissi Digital Classroom software. This allows
you to interact with other language students, record digitally, do
individual and group work and simultaneously work on videos. You learn to
subtitle, interpret and check your own work. In addition, these labs are
equipped with top of the range computers integrating audio-visual in-ceiling
LCD projector and large screens.