Laboratories and Facilities
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The high tech Science Centre opened in September 2000. This is
where the practical classes for the
Forensic Science, Biomedical Sciences
and Human Nutrition degree courses take place. The
building contains 12 state of the art laboratories
occupying three floors. The labs are equipped with an
extensive range of standard and specialised
laboratory equipment
that is used in Forensic & Biomedical practical
classes. Details of some of these practicals and other
events in the Science Building can be found in the
Forensic Files
section.
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There are 2 large 42
student laboratories on the first floor which are
multidisciplinary. The laboratories are equipped
with fume cupboards for the safe handling of
chemicals, audio visual and video facilities to
assist with the teaching of groups of students and
safety features such as emergency shower and eye
wash fountain. The second
large laboratory opened in December 2001 and provides a specialist forensic fingerprint
development laboratory and laboratory benching
designed for the examination of forensic evidence.
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Smaller laboratories on
the first floor include a dedicated laboratory for
Forensic Science holding the latest analytical
equipment for the cataloguing and comparison of
fingerprints, document comparison, footwear
comparison, Projectina comparator microscope used
for ballistics, E-fit software
and glass refractive index determination.
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The second floor holds the Microbiology teaching
laboratory which is a class 2 level containment
area, a separate microbiology/molecular biology
research laboratory and a microbiology preparation
laboratory
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Also on the second floor, the analytical
equipment laboratory includes 4 HPLC systems, 3 gas
chromatography machines, an atomic absorption
spectrometer, 3 spectrophotometers, 2 mass
spectrometers, an FTIR spectrometer and 2 Raman
spectrometers. This
large room is linked to a smaller laboratory where
the samples are prepared prior to their analysis.
There are also smaller research labs where the
postgraduate students work.
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The ground floor of the
building provides laboratory space for Forensic
entomology, Forensic archaeology, Anatomy &
Physiology and Biomedical
research and teaching. There is also a large
generic lab with flat top benching. There are long term plans to build a second
science facility on campus.
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