Under the guidance of a departmental Supervisor the student will design and execute an independent research project which will be submitted for examination as a a report. Data collection will be field based or laboratory based and may involve industrial placement. Field based projects will normally be based on a 7-10 days of field work. Data handling using statistical techniques must be integrated into the project . A vital aspect of the project development will be regular presentations of results in the form of seminars to their peer group and staff a number of times during the final year. The final seminar will be assessed by a panel of staff.