3 March 2006

Visit of HRH The Princess Royal

HRH The Princess Royal visited the University of Dundee today, Friday March 3, where she performed the official opening of the Queen Mother Building.

The Princess last visited the University two years ago when she laid the foundation stone for the £6 million Queen Mother Building, the new home for the University’s Division of Applied Computing. At that time she expressed a keen interest in returning to Dundee to see the finished building.

Dr Peter Gregor, head of Applied Computing, was delighted to welcome Her Royal Highness back to the University and show her the completed building, which offers state of the art facilities for teaching and research.

"The Princess Royal has taken a keen interest in the project to develop the Queen Mother Building and did get us underway two years ago, so it is marvellous that she is back at the University to perform the official opening," said Dr Gregor.

The Princess met staff involved in the construction of the Queen Mother Building, before being shown demonstrations of some being carried out in the Division of Applied Computing across its four main research strands - interactive systems design, assistive and healthcare technologies, the Space Technology Centre, and computational systems.

Some of the work on show was:

• a storytelling project which has linked schoolchildren in Dundee, Colombia, Canada and Chile.
• planet surface simulations which render realistic surface models of Mercury, Mars, the Moon and asteroids to support testing of planetary landers.
• "Social Mobiles" - inspired by the frustration and anger caused by other people’s mobile phones, the Social Mobiles are five phones which modify their user’s behaviour to make it less disruptive.
• a computer vision system which tracks and monitors the activity of a house occupant and can detect unusual movements, e.g. a fall.

The Princess also met some of the students who are now making use of the building’s distinctive teaching "pods" and watched a role-playing workshop.

The Princess also visited the Forensic Art Unit in the School of Life Sciences at the University, where she was given a demonstration of the work being carried out by Dr Caroline Wilkinson and her team.

HRH saw a "virtual" facial reconstruction computer system, a facial reconstruction workshop attended by students on the MSc in Human Identification course and computer animation of 3D heads.

The Forensic Art Unit, which also has a base in Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University, is a key initiative which involves collaboration between the areas of anatomy and art. The Unit’s work in reconstructing the face of Clonycavan man, a 2500-year-old body discovered in a peat bog in Ireland. was recently featured on the BBC’s Timewatch programme.

Forensic art work includes disciplines such as building facial reconstructions, recreating facial appearance from post-mortem images or illustrations of trauma for use in court. The work has widespread use, from human identification purposes, to archaeological investigations, to work for museums and media.

The Queen Mother Building is part of the £200 million redevelopment of the University of Dundee campus which includes the renovation of five historic buildings, a £20 million Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, a new teaching block for the Faculty of Education and Social Work, a library extension and new living accommodation for students.

For further information please call the Press Office on 01382 384768