Introduction to Life Sciences Research in Cambridge
Understanding living systems at the level of molecules, cells and whole systems
remains a challenge for
scientists in the 21st century. Breakthroughs arising from research in biological
and clinical sciences
have underpinned advances in medicine, veterinary medicine, agriculture and many
other spheres of
life.
Many fundamental contributions to biological and clinical sciences have been made in Cambridge. Current work is diverse and at the cutting edge of modern science. The research falls into a number of themes, and they are described on these pages.
Research at the smallest scale in structural biology illuminates the molecular processes taking place in the cell and between cells. These in turn underlie what we see taking place in development in plants and animals, in behaviour and in disease processes such as cancer growth, infection and neurodegeneration. In parallel some research looks at a larger scale from whole organisms to communities and populations of species. At the same time work that advances techniques, for example in spectroscopy, imaging, genomics and many other methods leads to further progress within the different areas of science themselves. This synergistic process is enabled by the close links and overlaps between the research themes and the strong ties to other schools via a range of initiatives and centres that bring together biological and clinical scientists with engineers, mathematicians and colleagues in many other disciplines. There are links to the two humanities schools through work, for example, in neuroscience and evolution and further links to the international community via a wide range of collaborative projects.
You will find on these pages a description of each research theme and an outline of some of the work being done in Cambridge, together with a list of the investigators in each theme. You will be able to find links to the scientists' web sites to find out more about the individual research programmes.
- Research in Cambridge
- University research news and features
- Research initiatives
- Bioenergy Initiative
- Cambridge Cancer Centre
- Cambridge Computational Biology Institute
- Cambridge Conservation Initiative
- Cambridge Environmental Initiatives
- Cambridge Immunology
- Cambridge Infectious Disease
- Cambridge Neuroscience
- Physics of Medicine
- Cambridge Stem Cell Initiative
- Cambridge Systems Biology Centre
- Centre for Trophoblast Research
- Research facilities