The mission of our school is to teach students how to become successful scientists, in an environment where we undertake world-class research, focused on turning science into medicine. We strive to ensure direct alignment of our teaching and research expertise, specialising in cancer biology, infection and immunity and regenerative medicine/stem cell biology. This alignment allows us to deliver teaching to our own science undergraduates, to science undergraduates from other schools and to medical and dental students that are informed by cutting-edge research and to establish research programmes that are grounded in the latest expertise in the field.

Undergraduate

We pride ourselves on the exceptional abilities of our students and the excellence of our teaching that leads to a consistently high quality of graduate emerging from the programmes. The quality of our teaching is recognised annually in the National Student Survey (NSS). For the BSc Cellular and Molecular Medicine pool of programmes: 96% of the respondents agreed that the 'Course is intellectually stimulating' and 91% agreed that the 'Staff are good at explaining things' and that 'Library resources have supported my learning well' (Source: DiscoverUni 2022).

Postgraduate

Our school is an ideal place for postgraduate students to learn rigorous scientific method through their training and research in either an MSc or PhD programme. All research students are mentored by experienced supervisors and all research programmes are embedded within one of the three broad research themes, providing a critical mass of scientists working on related topics. The majority of our PhD graduates go on to work in a research related environment.

High impact research

Turning science into medicine is our core research mission and to achieve this ambitious aim we undertake the fundamental science needed to progress ideas through to clinical trials or commercial development. The school has a proven track record for clinical translational work as recognised through the REF 2021 results.

We also aim to exploit our research discoveries through patent protection and by the formation of spin-out companies. Several spin-out companies have already been established to develop immunomodulatory molecules for autoimmune diseases, stem cells for the prevention of osteoarthritis and providing platform technologies for drug efficacy trials in immune diseases.