Inside UTS’s new Faculty of Science and Graduate School of Health Building

Penelope Dalla, PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Health: The new building is very light and airy. It has these beautiful large windows from our office we can see onto the green.

Professor Liz Harry, Deputy Director UTS iThree Institute: It's a very green building. It has this beautiful garden, rooftop garden which I think matters when you're a scientist in the lab looking at the bench you actually it's nice to look outside aswell.

Alice Shires, Director UTS Psychology Clinic: I like very much the auditorium, I love the green colour. I think is tremendously kinda cozy and everyone has something to say about it so probably that's my favourite, and possibly the curly stairs going up which is rather beautiful.

My favorite space in the building is a corridor actually, it's generating a lot of discussions. The light is beautiful, it looks really modern, it's really encouraging our interactions.

Professor Liz Harry: This new facility excites me a lot because the greatest love I have is scientific research and UTS is now invested in doubling that capacity.

Atilla Brungs, UTS Vice Chancellor: I think is building is almost like an exclamation mark of the strength UTS now has in it's science and its health research. Like all the new UTS buildings, its visually striking its kinda energetic and dynamic.

Alice Shires: But I think that having the Graduate School of Health and Science sitting together in a way in the same building certainly means that it sets the kinda tone of the building and it it gives an atmosphere that being really a sort of center of excellence for the sciences and the Health Sciences

Professor Liz Harry: So having a two together mains that we can do bigger and better things and address all the issues around a problem rather than just one little piece of it.

Professor Bruce Milthorpe, Dean Faculty of Science: Cross disciplinary collaboration is important because the world runs holistically and now the problems that we need to deal with are holistic problems.

Professor Charlie Benrimoj, Head Graduate School of Health: In the building we have the research lab right next to offices, right next to PhDs desks next to post grad compounds, and what we saying is the movement from one space to another is seamless. So that's encouraging I think better research because we can actually get together as groups, we can see what's happening in the lab it's giving us a research culture.

Penelope Dalla: These new labs we have are state of the art. They have all brand new equipment that has been provided for us. New instruments are more sensitive. They're going to increase the calibre of our work. What motivates me to get up and out of bed every day is that my research has such impact.

Joshua Benitez-Castellanos, Bachelor of Science: Learning in the super lab has been one of the most amazing experiences at the Uni so far. I think it's  the atmosphere that they have in the super lab that excites me the most. You walk in and you've got that... it's a different type of air that you can actually breathe.

The super lab is a very interesting space. We designed it so that we would have multiple groups of students not doing the same experiment but different experiments from different classes.

Joshua Benitez-Castellanos: Sometimes you take a peek and you can look at what you gonna be doing in the next class in that subject and it also adds that bit of "oh I want to do that next!"

Alice Shires: Well the psychology clinic is designed to provide several purposes. It does provide a service to the communities but it also serves a purpose to providing an environment for students to learn the skills of clinical psychologists in a safe supervised way.

The Graduate School as a strategy has adopted problem-based learning. What that means is that instead of having your traditional lecture where information just given to the students. The students actually acquire the information themselves and we help them think through that information, analyze it, evaluated it, apply it.

Alice Shires: The classrooms are designed such that they can work in groups the same subject could be explored from different angles.

When I walk through the building and I see students hard at work engaged simply because they are enjoying what they do. It really, really makes me feel proud. 

Professor Liz Harry: In the next five years I think you know watch this space because there is a lot more potential in UTS and I know that industry sees UTS as an easy group to work with. That's a lovely thing because I think it's important that research actually delivers solutions to problems that we have and that's always the UTS motto.