The Department is remarkably well-equipped with computational tools for the biomolecular sciences. The Department already has one computer cluster dedicated to Undergraduate use, as well as a Research cluster, and two new Bioinformatics laboratories are also currently being built. Our Biochemistry and Biological Science students master a number of computer-related skills, including being familiar with aspects of computer hardware and a number of common software packages including the use of email, internet and the web, word processing and spreadsheet packages. Some of you may already have access to a personal computer. If you do not but are considering buying one, it may well be in your best interest to contact us first for advice.
Teaching is increasingly computer-assisted.
One of the many benefits of this is that students can learn at their own pace. Staff are actively engaged in writing learning programmes for Web-based instruction or in posting the notes to their lectures to our Departmental Web server. The server contains information pertinent to our undergraduate courses, including timetables, syllabuses, course manuals, examination regulations, past papers, and material related to individual sets of lectures. Bioinformatics students will also have access to high-end molecular graphics workstations and UNIX servers for dedicated analyses as well on parts of the course. In addition they will also have access to the extensive hardware and software available in the Department of Computation giving an unrivalled access to all types of modern computing resources relevant to the biosciences.