University of Oxford

Brief overview

The Medical Sciences Division (MSD) of the University of Oxford is ranked number one in the world for medicine (clinical, preclinical and health) in 2019, and Number three in the world for life sciences. We have more than 1600 graduate students, 5600 academics, researchers and administrative staff and an annual research income per year of over £350 million.

Research areas

Pleural infection
Malignant Pleural effusion
Pneumothorax
Pneumonia
Biomarkers
COPD
Asthma
Interstitial lung disease (ILD)
Immunology
Infection
Lung cancer

Host centre eligibility

Global fellowships (return phase only)/European fellowships

Research infrastructure/facilities

The infrastructure/facilities available are as follows:

Expertise in trial design, methodology, delivery, data handling and analysis via ORTU staff (currently 23 members) in statistics, operations, trial management, data and quality assurance.
State-of-the-art laboratory facilities including platforms such as transcriptomics (single cell RNA sequencing), spatial transcriptomics (Nanostring Platform), proteomics (high throughput mass spectrometry), lipidomics, flow cytometry (ThermoFisher Attune NXT and BD FACSymphony A5 flow cytometers), protein production, and bioinformatic analyses.

Research funding/resources

The MSD has over £350 million/year of research funding, and is involved in 44 spin out research companies, with more than 7000 research outputs per year.

The host supervisor has achieved £8.5million of grant funding in the last five years. Resources for funding this research include the following (in addition to planned academic applications):

Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR) funding – Respiratory Theme, including funding for post doctoral laboratory work, data and clinical fellow time.
NIHR Clinical Research Network funding (NMR is Deputy National Lead for Respiratory Research in the UK). CRN funding currently supports 11 staff and further funding is available.
Funding from Industry partners (via established funds).

Links to non-academic sector

Collaborations and opportunities in the following areas:

Target Discovery Institute (University of Oxford)
Oxford University Innovations

Experience hosting international researchers, career development & training programmes, outreach activities

We have a long track record of successful hosting of international clinicians and researchers. On this basis, we have been awarded four short term ERS fellowships and two Long term fellowships, in addition to a RESPIRE2 fellowship. The RESPIRE2 fellow has gone on to an industry/academic post (Astra Zeneca, and Associate Professor UCL). We have hosted visiting physicians to learn specific pleural techniques from 12 countries, many of whom have gone on to successfully set up pleural services in their home countries.

HR Excellence in Research – EU award

Not applicable.