Imperial College

Overview

Imperial College London, the brainchild of Prince Albert, is a high-impact public research university in South Kensington, London. It came into being in 1907 through a Royal Charter and was formed by combining the City & Guilds College, the Royal College of Science, and the Royal School of Mines. Later on, the Imperial College School of Medicine and the Imperial College Business School were added. Along with the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Natural Sciences, the institution has 29 departments.

Aside from the main campus in South Kensington, Imperial is present in nine locations. It has six campuses for Medicine and one center dedicated to Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation. Plus, it has a conservation area at Silwood Park. Lastly, the institution has what is known as the White City Campus, a 25-acre infrastructure for researchers and experts to conduct collaborative projects.

Apart from those, Imperial has global institutes that allow its students, faculty, and researchers to conduct multidisciplinary investigations. Some examples are the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment, Data Science Institute, and Francis Crick Institute. Students, faculty, and researchers at Imperial College London also work on Data Science; Environment and Sustainability; Quantitative Technologies; and Bioscience.

For all their contributions to different fields, Imperial College scientists have been recognized by various award-giving bodies. For instance, Sir Alexander Fleming and Sir Ernst Boris Chain received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for their discovery of penicillin (together with their colleague Sir Howard Florey). Imperial has faculty members who have received the Fields Medal, too. One of them is Martin Hairer, who mainly works with probability theory and analysis. There are also those who have had the honor to be inducted into the Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, and British Academy as fellows.

Imperial College London is recognized by Athena SWAN as an institution that recognizes the contributions of women in different fields such as Engineering, Mathematics, Technology, Science, and Medicine in the academe.

Committed to excellence, Imperial also espouses a positive research culture. It regularly conducts staff surveys and Postgraduate Research Experience Surveys. Training and mentorship are also accessible to researchers, regardless of the current stage of their careers.

What’s more, Imperial is the only higher education institution in the UK to list its technology transfer office, Imperial Innovations, on the stock market. Through this, the works of researchers can be maximized to the benefit of society. This has allowed it to raise money that it then invests in spin-offs.