The Marine Technology Research Unit currently doesn’t offer a dedicated undergraduate or masters level programme at the University of Essex; however, there are a number of ways you can get involved in this field of research. Almost all lecturers at the University are research active, so the first thing to do is look at what the academic staff are working on and whether it aligns with your interests.
Undergraduate study
You can study a 3 year undergraduate degree, either in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering or in the School of Life Sciences, depending on whether your focus will be on technology or conservation applications. The first 2 years of your degree will involve modules that will give you a solid background in the techniques required for marine technology, for example, computer vision, AI, programming and data manipulation in computer science; robotics, communications, embedded processing in engineering; and chemistry, DNA processing, ecology, zoology, ecosystem function, oceanology in life sciences.
Whichever course you take, you will usually work on a final year project that can be the focus of your interests in marine technology. Self-guided projects are hard work because you need to do a lot of the background study yourself, but they are highly rewarding and often very interesting for the academics to be involved with. The final year project takes 3 terms and you will deliver a dissertation at the end of the final term.
Postgraduate study
If you already have an undergraduate degree, you can study a full-time 1 year postgraduate masters. This will include taught modules to develop your understanding of important disciplines (building on the themes mentioned above). MSc students will also develop a dissertation project with a strong research element and is expected to be at a higher level than undergraduate dissertations. Sometimes MSc dissertations are of a high enough standard to be published and may be the foundation of PhD research in the future.
Field trips and data collection
An important aspect of learning about marine technology is getting out in the field to try new techniques. Good ideas rarely survive exposure to reality and techniques can rapidly evolve in the field to master the conditions and collect the data required to answer the research questions. If your project involves SCUBA diving, we can introduce scientific diving techniques to support safe diving operations in the UIK and abroad.