About the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences

Staff and students in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences are united by a desire to understand how living systems work and how we can deliver better sustainable health and wellbeing to our planet and all its inhabitants.

Our staff support and undertake world-leading fundamental and translational research that makes a difference, and we work with our students to create an inspiring education overseen by world-renowned academics. The excellence of our staff and students underpins our outstanding reputation.

Schools

The faculty comprises nine schools.

Our teaching

We have a long-standing tradition of excellence in research-led teaching. Our broad range of expertise opens up a wealth of opportunities for students. 

Here you can study a range of challenging, research-focused, undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research programmes, all taught in the context of world-leading research environments, using specialist equipment and facilities. 

We are one of the few faculties in the UK who deliver professional programmes across Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Science. 

Our research

Our world-leading research expertise, ranging from studying molecules to populations, can be largely described within a set of eight focussed areas that are strategically developed and supported by our schools to support our research and education programmes. These disciplinary areas are:

  • molecular, cellular and structural biology;
  • immunology, virology and microbiology;
  • clinical sciences;
  • population health and life course epidemiology;
  • healthy and resilient plant and animal systems;
  • the brain, mind and behavioural sciences;
  • genetic epidemiology and informatics;
  • intervention research and methodologies. 

We will bring these areas together in different combinations to form an initial set of six interdisciplinary ‘Grand Challenge Research Clusters’ that each address a major societal challenge in the health and life sciences. These research clusters will seek to understand and prevent:

  • infectious diseases and anti-microbial resistance;
  • the harms done by humans on our planet’s living systems;
  • poor mental health outcomes;
  • cardiovascular disease;
  • cancer;
  • and engineer biology to create novel therapeutics, diagnostics, food systems and biomaterials.