Science Centre
UCD’s Science District presents a vision for science in Ireland in the early decades of the 21st century and a plan for UCD’s role in making that vision a reality. A core objective is the strategic integration of science with related disciplines including Agri-Food, Biomedicine, Engineering, and Information and Communications Technology (ICT). This overarching approach will serve to reinforce Ireland’s economic prosperity and pre-eminence in science and related disciplines.
The UCD Science District encompasses a wide spectrum of disciplines and facilities including, UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, UCD Health Sciences, UCD Centre for Agriculture and Food Science, UCD Veterinary Sciences Centre, UCD Computer Science and Informatics Centre. The new Science Centre will be a key resource in the development of UCD’s Science District.
Key aspects of the strategy for UCD’s Science District include:
- The co-location of cognate scientific disciplines and technology, supported by knowledge management systems, leading to achievement of critical mass in global terms
- The leveraging of the new UCD Horizons curriculum to develop new subject combinations, courses and degree programmes in response to emerging threats, opportunities and national needs
- The establishment of research and entrepreneurship as integral parts of UCD's undergraduate science programmes
- 4th Level Ireland - a new framework of structured postgraduate programmes at Masters and PhD levels
- State-of-the-art postdoctoral training and mentoring - tailored to a scientist's career path in academia or industry
- World-class research programmes in areas of strategic national importance
- A teaching and life-learning resource centre with state-of-the-art resources in continuing education and e-learning programmes
- Executive education programmes, drawing on guest academics from the highest echelons of global science and aimed at providing Ireland's industrial and scientific leaders with exposure to the best of thought leadership
- Innovative programmes for school children delivered through the Centre's interactive facility or through the Centre's 'Scientist-for-a Day' programme involving participation in laboratory research and user-friendly overviews of the discovery process.
Over the 50 years of its existence, UCD’s Belfield Campus has evolved into Ireland’s largest science centre, providing the broadest range of science research and education programmes and producing the highest number of science graduates in the country. Today however, the core of the UCD facility Science Centre, built for the science of the 1960s, is in need of development. This project has been instigated not just to address these deficits, but to make a dramatic shift in UCD’s capacity to deliver on the scale required to meet national objectives, including those set out in the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation (SSTI).
The new Science Centre is intended to be a transformational resource for Irish Science. It will act as a highly visible, high quality and inspiring showpiece and resource at a university, National and International level. The proposed centre for excellence will reinforce UCD’s ability to shape the Irish agenda. The centre will provide facilities, which will both attract and generate the highest level students, graduates and staff in the fields of Science and Engineering.
Click Here to see imagery of new teaching facilities for Science and Engineering
