Department of Biosciences

The vision for biosciences research at Durham is to focus on fundamental and cross-disciplinary science underpinning global challenges in climate change, food security, global health, sustainable bio-manufacturing, biodiversity and replacing animal models in research.  The cohesive and distinctive theme across our research portfolio is that of 'sustainability'. 

Public engagement in the Department of Biosciences takes many forms, with two core large-scale events during the year:

• The Celebrate Science Festival. Every year Biosciences has a large exhibit with several activities showcasing our research areas in ways to bring these alive for everyone. The exhibit is run by a mixture of academics, research staff, postgraduate students and technical staff.
• The Schools’ Science Festival is a major annual event, designed to inspire school pupils in Years 9 and 10, stimulating interest and encouraging wider participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The department hosts this event for the faculty and individual activities run several times for each visiting school party.

In addition to these large-scale events, our public engagement activities are diverse. These can be categorised as follows:

• Citizen Science, our highly successful MammalWeb platform to collate, validate and curate camera trap data that can inform the public about the distribution and ecology of mammals.
• Schools visits and activities such as the connecting schools to nature project, where we are working with at least 50 schools in the North East of England to improve awareness of and engagement with biodiversity.
• Public lectures, which range from the Royal Society to book festivals to Cafe Scientifique and Pint of Science.
• Media briefings about our research of interest to the general public, including COVID-19 sniffer dogs and Vitamin B12 synthesis for food supplements.
• Articles in broad interest magazines such as the World Wildlife Fund and interviews in the national press on topics including neglected tropical diseases.
• Charities and medical support groups, talks and activities linked to our research on the brain and pain for groups such as Parkinson's UK.
• Installations, we have a revolving public demonstration plot within our Botanic Gardens at Durham University to showcase the types of research and ecological challenges from the Molecular Plant Sciences and Ecology, Evolution and Environment research groupings. Importantly, public engagement is also an integral part of our undergraduate programme with our Public Engagement and Science into Schools modules.

All Biosciences teaching is research-led or research-informed. The co-delivery of research-led teaching promotes a broad-based, sustainability-centred research strategy, informed by scientific advances and national and international priorities.