Our Centres of Research Excellence

In 2008 we began a six-year, £34 million, investment strategy to support four top UK universities as BHF Centres of Research Excellence.

This scheme aimed to secure the UK’s future as a world-leading force in heart research - by attracting the best young scientists into the field - and encourage innovative approaches in the fight against heart disease by forging pioneering partnerships between scientists from different disciplines.

Raising the pulse of heart research
BHF Professor Michael Schneider, Director of our Centre of Research Excellence at Imperial College London, talks about the importance of funding these Centres.

Thanks to this strategy, by 2014, an additional 150 heart scientists will have been trained. According to a mid-term review, carried out in 2011, the universities are on track with 76 scientists in training so far. The funding has also sparked 85 brand new research projects to advance the fight against heart disease.

Thanks to your donations, UK heart research will bring life-saving treatments to more people, more quickly.

The Centres and their funding

Imperial College London

£8.9 million

 Imperial College London - British Heart Foundation

King's College London

£9 million

 King's College London - British Heart Foundation

University of Edinburgh

£7.6 million

 University of Edinburgh - British Heart Foundation

University of Oxford

£8.4 million

 

Oxford University - British Heart Foundation

Key aims of the centres

This investment, together with the researchers’ drive and commitment will ensure each Centre achieves three main aims:

  • To jump-start innovative research projects and support inspirational ideas
  • To seek out and train the very best young doctors and scientists to become the next generation of heart researchers
  • To foster pioneering research partnerships between heart scientists and other specialists, such as engineers and mathematicians, to gain brand new insight and ideas to tackle heart disease.

This unique initiative will provide the roots from which the next generation of world-leading heart researchers will grow.