Profile and Reputation
Abertay is situated in the centre of Dundee. The campus buildings include the historic Old College buildings of Dundee Business, an award-winning library, purposely designed scenes of crime teaching facilities, specialist Ethical Hacking labs designed for research into computer Hacking and misuse, and state of the art computer games labs in the Centre for Excellence.
As one of the nation’s smallest universities, Abertay has a tight knit student community of both local talent and international students. Approximately one fifth of Abertay's students are from outside the UK. One of Abertay’s main strengths is in its size, the sense of community and ‘open spaces’ approach to learning and teaching results in cross disciplinary research groups, spawning many interesting collaborative research projects, putting together for example psychology and animation, or urban water management and computer games technology.
Abertay was the first university in the world to offer a "computer games" degree in 1997. Today it remains a leader in the field with two major new developments - the creation of the UK's first Centre for Excellence in Computer Games Education, and a business support programme.
The Centre for Excellence is accredited by Skillset and has strong links with industrial partners from across the broadcast, interactive and wider digital media sectors. These partners include BBC Scotland, BBC New Media, BBC Visions, BSkyB, Channel 4, Electronic Arts, Realtime Worlds, Codemasters, Blitz, Rare, Sony Entertainment Europe, Microsoft and Disney Interactive Media.
The University runs "ethical hacking" degree programs; both undergraduate and postgraduate. Recently spending substantial amounts of money upgrading its specialist laboratories, Abertay is at the forefront for research into computer security, and countermeasure development.
The findings of the latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) showed that Abertay is the most highly rated modern university in Scotland for research in environmental sciences, law and psychology.{http://www.rae.ac.uk/pubs/2008/01/}
Abertay academics also research in the fields of forensic science, environmental systems, mental health and counselling, psychology, food science, biotechnology, and business management. The forensic science teaching facilities include a scenes of crime house and a bank. Abertay researchers made global headlines recently when they published results from their research into recovering fingerprints from fabrics using a technique known as vacuum metal deposition (VMD). It is the first time in more than 30 years that fingerprints on fabrics have been a major focus for research and the team have already had a number of successes using this method.
The research team based at Abertay’s SIMBIOS centre work with soils and ecosystems with leading academics from around the world having joined the team in recent years. The team work across a number of areas including using soil science to understand climate change.
Abertay organises and hosts the annual international Dare to be Digital games design competition which involves teams of students from around the world competing to create a new game in the space of ten weeks. Working with industry mentors, the teams experience the same studio environment as they would working with a major company - as do the students on Abertay's courses. The winning teams are the sole nominees for a unique BAFTA - the 'Ones to Watch' Award.
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