Led by Professor Gerard Parr and Dr Raheel Hassan, students taking the Cyber Security and Industrial Settings module visited BT's Research HQ Adastral Park, Martlesham, Suffolk in February - a fantastic opportunity for CMP students to hear an excellent introduction of the research park.
The visit included an exciting showcase tour where students and staff were given demonstrations of various innovative applications and prototypes developed at BT, including authentication without a password, Augmented Reality, Haptic Sensing Technology and Virtual Reality. All attendees got to see the prototypes in action and the students were given opportunities to try some of the technologies themselves as well!
Later in the day, staff and students were given a tour of the NOC/Drone and Robotic Lab. Staff and students were told how robots are being used as a solution to solve the congestion problem that occurs inside the hundreds of thousands of miles of pipes buried deep underground at BT. They also had a chance to see different types of robots and drones that are being developed there.
At the end of the tour, staff and students attended an interesting and informative talk by Prof Ben Azvine on “Future Cyber Defence – Opportunities and threats”.
The visit has provided invaluable experience for the students, with some commenting:
"I appreciated the opportunity we were given to visit such a nice site and get myself familiar with the advanced technology in my field of study and also dissertation."
"Everything was useful and the network operation room was just lit."
"Each and every thing was new and very useful... thank you for organising this wonderful industrial visit."
The visit received a 5-start rating voted by the students!