Research highlights
The School of Science has a first-class research record. Staff are engaged in an array of ground-breaking, world-class research:
- Scientists in our Department of Biological Sciences are engaged in world-class research in many aspects of structural biology, bioinformatics and materials science. For example:
- Streptococcus pneumoniae, as its name implies, is a bacterium that can cause pneumonia. Renowned electron microscopist Helen Saibil,
with colleagues at Birkbeck and collaborators from Leicester and
Oxford, showed for the first time how the protein pneumolysin, secreted
by this micro-organism, could assemble into a ring-like structure on
the surface of a human cell and bore itself through the cell membrane
to form a pore, leading to lysis of the cell's contents and
subsequently cell death.
- Professor Bonnie Ann Wallace has been awarded the
AstraZeneca Award for 2010 for her pioneering work on new methods of Circular
Dichroism (CD) and Synchrotron Radiation Circular Dichroism (SRCD) spectroscopy
for biological studies. This major prize is awarded triennially by The
Biochemical Society.
- Dr J. Slater has obtained the Silver Medal for Analytical Chemistry of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), making him the fourth winner of a prestigious RSC medals (previous winners were Professor J. Nicholson,
- The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences jointly runs the Research School for Geological and Geophysical Sciences with the Department of Earth Sciences at UCL.
- The research school was given 3.05 average ranking in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, making it third out of all environment and earth science departments in the UK. All the staff were ranked as 2* or better, and 80% were ranked 3* or 4*.
- The Department of Psychological Sciences provides an active and vibrant research environment that directly informs its teaching.
- In the 2008 RAE, Birkbeck Psychological Sciences was ranked 5th in the country for the excellence of its research.
- The prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education was awarded to the Centre for Brain Function and Development for its project 'Neuropsychological work with the very young: understanding brain function and cognitive development'.
