The University of Birmingham is a public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham, and Mason Science College, making it the first English civic or 'red brick' university to receive its own royal charter. The University have a long and proud history of firsts, at the University of Birmingham; they were the first – and are now one of the largest - civic universities in the UK.

At Birmingham, the institution teach and research across the full breadth of academic disciplines, creating a vibrant community with multi-disciplinary opportunities for research and education. The University is a truly international community consisting of more than thousands of staff, students, and alumni. The student community is not only one of the largest of any UK university, it is highly diverse, with 82 per cent of home undergraduate students from state schools, 32 per cent from a BAME background, and 35 per cent in the first generation of their family to attend university.

The programme consists of three major components comprising 180 credits over 44 weeks.

1. Research project

The core element of the course is an extended research project of approximately 9-months duration. Each project supervisor will team up with a co-supervisor to offer a collaborative project, where most of the work is done in the lead supervisor’s lab, but complementary elements take place in the lab of the co-supervisor. The research project is documented in the MRes Research Thesis, which has the character of a small PhD dissertation and is examined by a team of external and internal examiners.

2. Research Techniques in Molecular Biotechnology

The first of two taught modules in the course introduces you to fundamental concepts of key techniques in molecular and cell biology through a series of lectures and workshops. Evaluating and working with published research literature is a second key element of this module.

The assessment is focused on thinking about research problems. For instance, an assignment would ask you to devise experiments to investigate a particular research question in the area of molecular cell biology.

Below are some of the topics that you will encounter in this module:

Flow cytometry
Cell Manipulation, Transfection and Micro-Injection
Mammalian cell culture
Protein expression and purification
Metabolomics
NMR spectroscopy
Chromatin immunoprecipitation screening
Drug screening
3. Funding and Communicating Science

The module is taught as a 2 day intensive workshop in which a range of subjects are covered relating to:

How science is funded in the public and private sector
Research councils and charities funding
Project Planning
Intelectual property
Financial planning
Assessment take the form of a group work activity aimed at producing a grant proposal or business plan for a research project. This includes a oral presentation of the plan as well as an assessment of a critical review of another groups plan.

You will need to book the accommodation after you have been accepted.

You can choose to live on campus or off campus in private accommodation.

• Make a booking online after you have been accepted (in this case please let us know your choice when you apply).
• Register when you arrive - its not possible to reserve a room before arriving. You can arrive a few days before and book it