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General information

Our Department is the largest within Cambridge University’s School of Biological Sciences; consisting of 59 research groups, based across two main buildings in Cambridge city centre and numerous additional sites across the University, with principle investigators including established University staff and Independent Research Fellows funded by the Royal Society, Research Councils and charities. Accordingly, our internationally recognised research programmes span a wide range of disciplines, such as structural biology, cell signalling, control of gene expression, RNA biology, molecular enzymology, molecular microbiology, plant molecular biology and bioenergy, chemical biology, drug design, cancer, cardiovascular biology and systems biology.

The Department additionally houses multiple core facilities funded by the Wellcome Trust, BBSRC and MRC; including those for NMR, x-ray crystallography, mass spectrometry, protein chemistry, metabolomics, and protein and nucleic acid sequencing. In collaboration with the Department of Genetics, we also established the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre, which hosts genomics, proteomics and associated bioinformatics facilities.

Outside of research, our Department plays an increasing role on the national and international scale. Members of our Department participate widely in the funding and governance committees of UK and European Research Councils and research charities. We engage in diverse collaborations with many multinationals, such as GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, and also with numerous smaller biotechnology companies. In addition, our fundamental research has led to Departmental members co-founding commercial ventures, including Biotica and Astex Technology.

Whatever our achievements in scientific discovery and application may be, our most important contribution, however, will always be our graduates and postgraduates, and the future discoveries and contributions they will make to science, industry, government and teaching!