Royal Veterinary College

Overview

Royal Veterinary College

Royal Veterinary College (RVC) is a public veterinary school in London, United Kingdom. It is a constituent college of the federal University of London. Its roots can be traced back to the Veterinary College of London, which was established in 1791 by Granville Penn, the grandchild of William Penn. RVC is known for its veterinary science programs, reflecting its heritage as the largest and oldest veterinary school in the UK and one among the only nine vet schools in the country.

Royal Veterinary College Key Statistics

The college comprises three departments: the Comparative Biomedical Sciences, the Clinical Sciences and Services, and the Pathobiology and Population Services. It offers undergraduate programs in veterinary medicine (BVetMed) and a combined BVetMed and veterinary science. RVC also offers the Gateway course of its six-year veterinary degree program as part of the UK Widening Participating cohort.

The veterinary school has more than 5,000 students, around 500 of whom are in postgraduate programs. It also employs around 1,100 academic and administrative staff based in one of its three sites. The college has a campus each in central London and Camden, along with another one in rural Hertfordshire. It also manages the Boltons Park Farm in Hawkshead Estate in Hertfordshire.

Other Royal Veterinary College key statistics include its library that is split across its London and Camden campuses. The library features an extensive range of textbooks, journals, and electronic resources.

Royal Veterinary College Research

Royal Veterinary College is considered England’s best veterinary school for research, according to the United Kingdom’s Research Assessment Exercise in 2008. As a public institution of education, it receives funding from the government through various agencies as well as the University of London. It also receives significant grants through partnerships with academic institutions, corporations, and other organizations. In 2017, it received a $7 million grant from the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s initiative in collaboration with University College London.

Royal Veterinary College research produces some of the notable research outputs in various fields such as medicine, biology, and internal medicine. Its researchers, faculty members, and students are also active participants of conferences such as EMBC: International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, NER: International IEEE/EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, and RSS: Robotics: Science and Systems.

Its most popular output is Klionsky et al.’s (2021) “Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition),” which was published in the Autophagy journal. It was cited 8,166 times by researchers around the world. Its second most popular academic paper is Klionsky et al.’s (2012) “Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy,” which was cited 8,032 times. It was similarly published in the Autophagy journal. Its third most popular research work is Hui et al.’s (2020) “The continuing 2019-nCoV epidemic threat of novel coronaviruses to global health - The latest 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China,” which was published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. It was cited 2,195 times.

In addition, RVC houses four research units, namely, the One Health Center for Zoonoses & Tropical Veterinary Medicine, the Center for Integrative Mammalian Research, the Center for Conservation Medicine & Ecosystem Health, and the Center for Research & Innovation in Veterinary & Medical Education.