The Verena Holmes Building
Our new Science, Technology, Health, Engineering and Medicine facility, the Verena Holmes Building, encourages exciting innovative approaches to teaching, learning and research.
The Verena Holmes Building, our new £65 million building, is now open. Home to our dynamic science, technology, health, engineering and medicine courses, the building is part of our exciting £150m city campus investment.
This impressive development on our city campus opens up major opportunities for students to study in fantastic new facilities and spaces. Our multi-million-pound flagship building will transform our city campus for current and future generations of students.
It locates engineers, scientists, doctors and healthcare students together in an inspirational learning environment, with industry-standard, hi-tech facilities on every floor. It provides space for research, experimentation, industry collaboration and so much more.
Many other students use these facilities, studying a diverse range of subjects including Archaeology, Sport, Policing, Psychology and Computing.
Born in 1889 in Ashford, Kent, Verena became a trailblazer for women in the industry as arguably the first female in the UK to have a full-time career as a professional mechanical engineer.
An advocate for women in engineering and dedicated to the development of female engineers, she represented a breakthrough for equal rights in the early 20th century. In 1919 she was a founding member of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), became the first female member elected to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE ) in 1924 and in her own engineering firm, set up in 1946, she employed only women.