Research excellence at Imperial College London

Research Excellence (round2) - Imperial College London

In 2008 the BHF began a £34 million investment strategy to support four top UK universities as BHF Centres of Research Excellence, aiming to secure the UK’s future as a world-leading force in heart research. One of these institutions was Imperial College London, which received £8.9 million from the BHF to establish the Imperial BHF Centre of Research Excellence (CRE). Led by BHF Professor Michael Schneider, the Centre has attracted more top scientists to Imperial, including BHF Professor Gianni Angelini, and has helped them secure further funding from other sources to push their exciting research forward. They are training the next generation of heart researchers by enrolling students onto the Centre’s new cross-faculty PhD programme in Cardiovascular Sciences. This exposes students to disciplines traditionally kept separate from one another, such as biomedical sciences, physics, engineering, nanotechnology and computer science – scientists working outside biomedical research are joining heart research. The BHF has now awarded £6 million to Imperial to build on its success and continue as the BHF CRE for the next five years. They will tackle challenges in mechanobiology (the ‘mechanics’ of the heart and circulatory system, such as blood flow through vessels), inflammation and regenerative medicine to discover how they could influence or treat heart disease, using the latest genetic and imaging technologies. Their focus will remain on training scientists from different disciplines and they will further develop the innovative PhD programme. This funding will help Imperial drive forward their research findings at the laboratory bench towards the hospital bedside, with clinical resources from their local NHS trusts.