Tuesday 22^nd March 2011 saw a group of year 13 applied ICT students make a trip to Derry where they visited the Seagate facility in Springtown and toured the UU Magee campus.

 

Seagate is a global corporation specialising the in the research, development and manufacturing of storage devices. Seagate came to Northern Ireland in 1993 with the establishment of their facility at Springtown Industrial Estate in Derry. Production on hard disk components began in 1994 and today the facility develops and manufactures the read-write heads for hard drives.

 

CBS students had the opportunity to tour and observe operations within the plant, it uses some of the most advanced technology in existence, and the Springtown facility is the largest factory of its type in the recording head industry, supplying over a million heads every day for Seagate disc drives. 

 

During the visit, students observed technicians and engineers develop the hard disk read – write heads at several stages of development in the ‘clean room’ environment using specialised tools and equipment. One student decided to take his chance to get suited up for the operations – but he couldn’t be tempted to being a 12 hour shift!

 

 

Students where able to get a real sense of the growing demand for storage, the new type of devices required to support the latest ‘cloud’ computing and where presented with how Seagate are continually evolving and adapting to the latest trends in the industry.

 

After lunch at Magee, the students met with Professor Liam Maguire, Head of School of Computing and Intelligent Systems. He showed the students around the facilities available to undergraduate students in the computing teaching labs. They also had the chance to experience an actual games design tutorial that was taking place where students where using software to make apps for Android smart phones.

 

 

Prof Maguire then showed the students around the Intelligent Systems Research Centre which is a facility dedicated to the creation of intelligent computational systems, taking inspiration from biology and neuroscience. Students had the opportunity to experience the type of post-graduate research that is carried out in the centre, such as cognitive robotics, brain-computer interfacing, intelligent embedded systems, intelligent wireless sensor networks, intelligence in serious computer games, self-repairing hardware and software, and intelligent multimedia. 

 

Students had a chance to see where researchers work with robots to achieve a greater understanding of biological signal processing and the translation of critical aspects of that knowledge into computational systems that can perform in a way that humans would consider "intelligent". One student tried on a very fetching head wear – a brain inference cap used to carry out experiments in the lab. 

 

 

 

 

Finally the students met with Kerri McCusker who is a researcher studying serious games and virtual worlds. She demonstrated the second life virtual world that she has developed and explained how students are using it remotely to complete assignments and experiments within the campus. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 22^nd March 2011 saw a group of year 13 applied ICT students make a trip to Derry where they visited the Seagate facility in Springtown and toured the UU Magee campus.

 

Seagate is a global corporation specialising the in the research, development and manufacturing of storage devices. Seagate came to Northern Ireland in 1993 with the establishment of their facility at Springtown Industrial Estate in Derry. Production on hard disk components began in 1994 and today the facility develops and manufactures the read-write heads for hard drives.

 

CBS students had the opportunity to tour and observe operations within the plant, it uses some of the most advanced technology in existence, and the Springtown facility is the largest factory of its type in the recording head industry, supplying over a million heads every day for Seagate disc drives. 

 

During the visit, students observed technicians and engineers develop the hard disk read – write heads at several stages of development in the ‘clean room’ environment using specialised tools and equipment. One student decided to take his chance to get suited up for the operations – but he couldn’t be tempted to being a 12 hour shift!

 

 

Students where able to get a real sense of the growing demand for storage, the new type of devices required to support the latest ‘cloud’ computing and where presented with how Seagate are continually evolving and adapting to the latest trends in the industry.

 

After lunch at Magee, the students met with Professor Liam Maguire, Head of School of Computing and Intelligent Systems. He showed the students around the facilities available to undergraduate students in the computing teaching labs. They also had the chance to experience an actual games design tutorial that was taking place where students where using software to make apps for Android smart phones.

 

 

Prof Maguire then showed the students around the Intelligent Systems Research Centre which is a facility dedicated to the creation of intelligent computational systems, taking inspiration from biology and neuroscience. Students had the opportunity to experience the type of post-graduate research that is carried out in the centre, such as cognitive robotics, brain-computer interfacing, intelligent embedded systems, intelligent wireless sensor networks, intelligence in serious computer games, self-repairing hardware and software, and intelligent multimedia. 

 

Students had a chance to see where researchers work with robots to achieve a greater understanding of biological signal processing and the translation of critical aspects of that knowledge into computational systems that can perform in a way that humans would consider "intelligent". One student tried on a very fetching head wear – a brain inference cap used to carry out experiments in the lab. 

 

 

 

 

Finally the students met with Kerri McCusker who is a researcher studying serious games and virtual worlds. She demonstrated the second life virtual world that she has developed and explained how students are using it remotely to complete assignments and experiments within the campus.