Department of Engineering

The department is housed across the Haslett, Spärck Jones and the Laura Annie Willson buildings.  It contains the offices of our staff, most of our research laboratories, seminar/tutorial rooms, and flexible teaching and study space.

State-of-the-art workshops and labs support our diverse research activities and over £20 million of investment has been made in the past five years in new and improved infrastructure.  This has included significant enhancement of our railway engineering, advanced manufacturing, and thermos-fluids facilities, as well as construction of the Huddersfield Smart House

Our staff bring energy and enthusiasm to their work, offering expertise in their fields. Their established industry links allow us to continually refresh and update our teaching and research.  Most of our undergraduate courses across Mechanical and Electronic subject areas have been fully accredited by the IMechE and the IET, for over 20 years, a testament to our continually high standard of education and our close relationship with the engineering profession.

The quality and power of our research across the school was recognised in the most recent REF (Research Excellence Framework) assessment, 2021, where most of our research and impact was assessed as being world-class or internationally leading.  

This is further supported by the highly prestigious award of Queens Anniversary Prizes in both 2019 and 2021 for excellence, innovation, and public benefit from our research.

Our Research

The School of Computing and Engineering boasts a vibrant and successful research environment, with over 180 academics and researchers actively engaged in ground-breaking research with real-world applications.

With activities over a range of computer science and engineering disciplines, we have a large portfolio of research and innovation projects supported by funding from, for example, UKRI (EPSRC, STFC and Innovate UK), the Royal Academy of Engineering, EU Horizon Programmes, and direct industry contracts. 

Our research environment is lively and collaborative.  Our Centre for Precision Technologies (CPT) is at the forefront of creating new measurement techniques, we apply novel techniques to real world problems. Highly innovative research and strong links with industry resulted in the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) designating the CPT as a National Centre of Excellence in Advanced Metrology.

Research carried out in our Institute of Railway Research (IRR) has helped to improve the knowledge of the way in which railway vehicles interact with the track, including key performance aspects such as suspension performance, wheel-rail contact, traction, and braking. This research is leading to increased safety and reliability levels, reducing costs and improved performance of the railway system. The IRR was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2019.

Our Ion Beam Centre brings together the fields of innovative particle accelerator development and the use of particle accelerators for probing the properties of materials using the world-leading MIAMI and MEIS facilities at the University of Huddersfield.

The latest 2021 REF results show that the research carried out in the school has increased significantly in quality and impact as well as volume since the last assessment in 2014. This is a clear recognition of the excellent research that is now being carried out here and the impact it is having as well as the hard work that colleagues in the school have put into bidding for research funding and producing world class outputs.

The highlights:

✔️ In Engineering 50% of Impact was at 4* (‘World Leading’)!

Our facilities