Discovery Science

Innovative approaches to diagnostics, treatment and patient care can arise from cross-discipline collaboration, translating discovery science into healthcare applications such as diagnostic devices. At the NIHR Imperial BRC we partner with departments throughout Imperial College’s Faculties of Engineering and Natural Sciences to identify relevant discoveries and collaborate to develop them into applications to transform health care.

Faculty of Engineering

The Faculty of Engineering seeks to provide international leadership in engineering research and education and is widely recognised as a world-leading engineering school. We work with many of the Faculty’s ten departments to translate discovery science into healthcare applications.

In particular, we work with Bioengineering, Computing, Electrical & Engineering, Aeronautics, Materials and Mechanical Engineering. We also partner with the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and its Centres, including the Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology, Musculoskeletal Medical Engineering Centre, Centre for Blast Injury Studies, Centre for Neurotechnology, and the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation.

One of our successful collaborations resulted in the Bio-inspired Artificial Pancreas. Working with Professor Chris Toumazou at the Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology, we took the artificial pancreas, designed to help patients with type 1 diabetes, into clinical trials. Trials at the NIHR Imperial Clinical Research Facility, Hammersmith Hospital generated more than 800 hours of clinical data, proving the safety and efficacy of the Bio-inspired Artificial Pancreas.

Faculty of Natural Sciences

The Faculty of Natural Sciences provides world-class research across several core scientific disciplines, generating a wealth of discovery science with the potential for clinical application. We collaborate with the departments of Chemistry, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and the Institute of Chemical Biology.

Cross-Faculty units

Imperial’s cross-Faculty units support research at the intersection of disciplines, benefiting from expertise in different areas and addressing global problems in novel ways.

Data Science Institute

Data science is at the core of all modern transdisciplinary scientific activities, as it involves the whole life cycle of data, from acquisition and exploration to analysis and communication of the results. Data plays a key role in many healthcare applications, particularly diagnostics; we partner with the Data Science Institute to ensure data is integrated and used effectively in our translational research.

Institute of Global Health Innovation

The Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) works to design and diffuse high impact global healthcare innovations, and to reduce health inequalities worldwide.

Centre for Molecular Bacteriology & Infection

The Centre for Molecular Bacteriology & Infection (CMBI) has a unique focus on the study of disease-causing bacteria, and represents the largest grouping of scientists and clinicians in the UK working on the mechanisms of virulence of bacterial pathogens. The CMBI aims to understand the biology of infectious diseases with an emphasis on bacterial infections, and to translate this information into novel strategies for preventing and treating microbial disease.