Teaching facilities
All students at King’s benefit from a comprehensive range of excellent facilities and services, from integrated library and IT coverage to pastoral and welfare support. The library has the most extensive collection of nutrition books and journals in the UK.
In addition to College and School-wide services, students in the Department of Nutrition & Dietetics have access to sophisticated analytical equipment for the analysis of energy, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins as well as biochemical markers of nutritional status (including bomb calorimeters, the I-Lab autoanalyser, HPLCs, GLC, GLC-Mass-spectroscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy, scanning UV spectrometers, kinetic analysers, ultracentrifuge).
There are also facilities for carrying out cell culture experiments, as well as flow cytometry, confocal microscopy and genomics analysis.
A purpose-built metabolic research unit for human dietary intervention studies is located within the Department, including a metabolic kitchen, two dining rooms, three clinical investigation rooms and two laboratories for processing biological samples. These rooms are equipped with a range of equipment for measuring vascular function, blood pressure and lipoprotein metabolism.
Facilities exist for the measurement of energy expenditure by indirect calorimeters for the study of energy metabolism and for animal feeding studies. Researchers within the Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences also have access to clinical and analytical chemistry facilities at St Thomas’ and King’ College Hospitals.
The Department has pioneered methodology for estimating food intake by food photography and has developed software for estimating nutrient intake.
There are excellent computing facilities within the Department and the College.
Tate & Lyle has recently contributed £4.5 million towards new nutritional research facilities at King’s, including the development of a Clinical Research Facility at the St Thomas’ Campus, which opened in 2008. The centre includes a five-bed ward, a body composition laboratory and kitchen facility, a forearm blood flow laboratory, an exercise laboratory and two dedicated cardiovascular ultrasound laboratories. There is also new accommodation for research and nursing staff. This facility is designed to make clinical studies more comfortable for participants and to make it easier for health professionals to collaborate on translational research.