UCL SECURITY SCIENCE DOCTORAL RESEARCH TRAINING CENTRE

Each year the SECReT programme takes on a fresh cohort of between 10-25 students all wishing to complete a doctorate in crime or security-related field. Our students come from a wide variety of scientific disciplines ranging from across the engineering and physical sciences through to the social sciences. The most important aspect of our students is that they are all working on projects that will have an impact in the real world.

You can see examples of SECReT students working on real world problems including radicalisation, cyber security, explosives, baggage screening, forensic analysis and sex trafficking by clicking this link.

Some students come into the programme directly from industry although most are students who have recently completed a masters or undergraduate degree. The diversity of our students is integral to our success – our students learn from one another as much as they do from the content of the programme.

Each cohort is identified by the year that they joined the programme (eg. 2009 Students are students who joined in September 2009.) Each cohort forms a close-knit group engaged in many activities designed to promote their social and academic cohesion; students from different cohorts (ie. from different years) also interact regularly to ensure that learning is passed down from one year to the next.

Each student has a student mentor assigned to them from the year above – this means that our students are not only gaining from inter-cohort experience, but also learning how to help other students junior to them.

• 2009 student profiles
• 2010 student profiles
• 2011 student profiles
• 2012 student profiles
  

SECReT students are active in many activities designed to enhance their professional and personal skills. These activities are also designed to help improve the learning experience which can be fed back into the quality of the research:

• Induction conference
  

SECReT students begin their four-year programme by travelling as a group to the European Security Research Conference.

• Industry engagement evening

SECReT students work in multidisciplinary groups to prepare a ‘crime scenario’  presentation for an audience of industry/public sector partners. In this way they learn to work together, and begin learning valuable professional skills, as well as making links with ‘real world’ partners so that their research will make a real impact.

• Spring School

SECReT students work with prospective students of the programme on a one-day workshop involving academics from across UCL. Prospective students, including undergraduate students from around the UK, work on a mini-project.

• Conference attendance

SECReT students visit conferences all around the world. As part of their
learning experience they return to the cohort and present on exciting new
science that they have encountered. These conferences help students stay at the forefront of their research area, provide them with valuable networking opportunites, and eventually provide a forum where they can disseminate their own work through posters and presentations.

A complete record of the conferences attended by our students can be downloaded by clicking this link.

• Student organised security and crime research conferences

Each year students convene this event to bring together academics and PhD researchers from across UCL.

• Public engagement, Presenting Skills and Wider activities

SECReT students will be involved in public engagement activities.

• Student social activities

• Student awards