UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH

UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH

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Plymouth University is a public university in one of our favourite (fond memories of diving) locations in the South West of England, with over 28,600 students and is the 10th largest in the United Kingdom by total number of students (including the Open University). It has almost 2,900 staff making it one of the largest employers in the south west. The main campus is in the Devon city of Plymouth, but the university has campuses and affiliated colleges all over South West England.

Whilst the University has been known as Plymouth University since June 2011 as a result of a rebrand, the formal name and legal title of the university remains "University of Plymouth".

SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

This faculty is home to the School of Biomedical and Biological Sciences, the School of Computing and Mathematics, the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Studies, and the School of Marine Sciences and Engineering.

The university provides professional diving qualifications on a number of its courses, the only university in the country to do so. The university's diving centre is based next to Queen Anne's Battery Marina and has a full-time team of instructors and dedicated boats and equipment.

In October 2005, The Sun newspaper voted the University as having the most bizarre degree course in the country, the BSc (Hons) in Surf Science & Technology. Commonly known as "surfing", this course is actually centred on coastal/ocean sciences, surfing equipment/clothing design and surfing-related business, which has its popularity increased by the geographical location of the University.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark on 10 June 1921) is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. He is the longest-serving, oldest-ever spouse of a reigning British monarch, and the longest-lived male member of the British royal family.

A member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Prince Philip was born in Greece into the Greek and Danish royal families, but his family was exiled from Greece when he was a baby. After being educated in France, England, Germany, and Scotland, he joined the British Royal Navy in 1939, at the age of 18. From July 1939, he began corresponding with the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth (his third cousin through Queen Victoria and the elder daughter and heir presumptive of King George VI) whom he had first met in 1934. During the Second World War he served with the Mediterranean and Pacific fleets.

After the war, Philip was granted permission by George VI to marry Elizabeth. Before the official announcement of their engagement, he abandoned his Greek and Danish royal titles, converted from Greek Orthodoxy to Anglicanism, and became a naturalised British subject, adopting the surname Mountbatten, from his maternal grandparents. After an engagement of five months, as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, he married Elizabeth on 20 November 1947. Just before the marriage, the King granted him the style of His Royal Highness and the title Duke of Edinburgh. Philip left active service, having reached the rank of commander, when Elizabeth became Queen in 1952. His wife made him a prince of the United Kingdom in 1957.

30 Oct 2012 BBC NEWs - DUKE OF EDINBURGH OPENS WAVE TANK

The Duke of Edinburgh has opened what is thought to be the UK's most sophisticated wave energy testing tank at Plymouth University. The £19m Marine Building heralds a "new dawn" for renewable energy in the region, said the university.

The duke also unveiled a computer-operated ship simulator used to train future vessel captains. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Marine Science by the university. The doctorate was awarded to "pay tribute to his distinguished and decorated career" in the Royal Navy.

'Technological breakthroughs'

On the ground floor of the Marine Building, engineers will be able to test devices using waves, currents and wind. The second floor has the simulator to enable students to pilot vessels from super tankers to yachts in ports around the world. There is also a business support centre for wave energy firms.

Prof Wendy Purcell, the university's vice-chancellor, said: "We are heralding a new dawn for the city, the region and the marine renewable sector, who will be able to use the building's research and development facilities to catalyse technological breakthroughs."

The opening of the Marine Building follows the announcement on Monday of what could be the first wave energy machine for Wave Hub, a grid-connected test site about 10 miles off the coast at Hayle in Cornwall.

Last year another wave energy testing site was announced in Falmouth Bay in Cornwall. Falmouth Bay Testing Site (Fabtest) will enable developers to test wave energy devices prior to linking up to Wave Hub.

PERFORMING ARTS

This faculty is host to the School of Architecture, Design and Environment, School of Art & Media and the School of Humanities and Performing Arts. Arts subjects are usually taught in the Roland Levinsky building and the Scott building, a 19th-century building located next to Roland Levinsky which was modernised externally in 2008 to keep to the university's current design. The faculty offers degrees in Architecture, English, History, Art History, 3D Design, Fine Art, Music, Photography, Media Arts, Theatre & Performance and Dance Theatre. Advanced research is available across the disciplines in all three Schools, including via the innovative international Planetary Collegium in new media art.

ROLAND LEVINSKY

The Roland Levinsky Building, designed by architects Henning Larsen with Building Design Partnership, is clad with copper sheets in a seamed-cladding technique, is nine storeys high and has 13,000 square metres (140,000 sq ft) of floor space. The Faculty of Arts, previously based in Exmouth and Exeter moved here in August 2007. The building contains two large lecture theatres, the Jill Craigie Cinema, used by the film students to display their films and for showing of films to the public; three performance rehearsal studios; digital media suites; and a public art gallery which displays work by local artists groups, students and famous artists.

MUSICAL COMPUTERS

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research team (ICCMR), led by Eduardo Reck Miranda, is formed of scholars from different backgrounds and from different departments across the University: School of Computing, Communications and Electronics, Faculty of Education, Music, and the School of Art and Media.

The ICCMR comprises four interconnected research teams. The Evolutionary Music Team is concerned with the problem of musical evolution. Research themes include origins of emotions, ontogenesis, evolution of grammars and generative performance. The Music and the Brain Team is mostly concerned with the problem of representation of musical experience. Research is focusing on active perception, role of timbre in musical expectancies, development of experience-dependent abstractions and brain–computer interfaces. This team overlaps with the Auditory Group at the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience led by Dr Sue Denham.

The Music Technology Team is concerned with the conversion of basic scientific research into practical music technology. Projects include tools for composition and sound design, music controllers, sound synthesis algorithms and musical robotics. The Musical Practice Team is concerned with musical practices using new technology and contemporary music. Projects include music in the community, music facilitation for disability and sonic arts. The team works in close collaboration with Peninsula Arts.

INTERNATIONAL RANKINGS

On the basis of the results of the 2008 RAE Plymouth joined the top 50 UK universities, showing the greatest improvement in the UK in research performance since the previous RAE, in 2001. Overall rankings of UK universities by the 2008 RAE can be found here. Information about how RAE scores are calculated and the full results for 2008 and earlier Research Assessment Exercises, can be found here.

In The Times and Sunday Times University League Tables 2015, Plymouth University's world ranking was listed as 701st= and 701+ in QS World University Rankings 2014/15. Times Higher Education ranked Plymouth between 276th and 300th in its World University Rankings 2014–15, and ranked it as equal 42nd in a list of the world 100 best universities under 50 years old, in May 2014.

Cornwall College