If you study with us, you will have access to a range of opportunities to underpin computer science theoretical foundations with hands-on practice and application. We will provide you with learning that simulates industry practice with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.

Gaming and AI

Our Games Lab hosts PCs with industry-standard graphics cards so everything can run smoothly and has several PlayStation Development Kits - our partnership with Sony means we will be able to provide our students with the latest dev kits to aid their final year project to create a unique game, taking it all the way from production to publication. Steel Minions is our games studio where our students create and publish their own games on the Playstation Network, using our commercial software licenses.

Our Smart Interactive Technologies Lab has a different focus – its hardware is designed to support the study of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It hosts intelligent robots that students can use to learn programming complex technologies with object tracking, speech recognition, conversational AI, indoor navigation, object manipulation and even dance and gymnastics. We have the humanoid robots Nao, the world’s first social humanoid able to recognize faces and basic human emotions, and Pepper optimized for human interaction through conversation and touch screen. We also have the pet robot MiRo - a fully programmable autonomous biomimetic, best suited for developing companion robots and Beam, the telepresence mobile platform, which is the state-of-the-art solution to having genuine physical presence and impactful, engaging communication across any distance.

Networks and Forensics

The Cyber Security, Forensics and Computer Networks courses are supported by 4 specialist labs that include high spec networking devices and hardware to support virtual machine environments and industry standard tools and applications for security testing and forensic investigation of devices.

In our Cisco certified networking labs, the PCs are connected to the state-of-the-art Cisco routers and switches and security devices with access to learn about their configurations as well as VMWare technology in order to work on various operating systems and applications. We also have the latest cybersecurity and forensics software to practice and conduct forensics investigation, including Encase, Axiom Magnet and Cellebrite for mobile forensics just to name a few.

Cyber Security

Our Ada Lovelace lab is designated for the MSc Cyber Security course, where our teaching and lab sessions take place. This lab is designed in a way that means students will learn and practise the skills from attacking and defending points of view. We also have a virtual network of vulnerable machines supporting our students to carry out their experiments in a safe environment.

Cantor Atrium

Our facilities give you access to hundreds of applications in our flexible working and teaching environments. We will provide you with remote computer access to use our software and applications, so you can continue your learning outside of the University. As one of the largest user of Microsoft Azure Lab services in the UK, we will provide you with access to many unique cloud-based teaching resources.