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UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences

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About us

We support the Life and Medical Sciences research community to achieve its strategic goals.

Our remit


We work to strengthen and enhance the effectiveness of the research community by:

  • Helping to develop individual career strategies
  • Coordinating funding applications
  • Building communities, promoting cross-disciplinary working, and by fostering collaborations.

Our place within UCL


We are part of the Office of Vice-Provost (Health), work closely with the Translational Research Office (TRO), and are also closely aligned with Office of the Vice-Provost (Research). For information and about other similar offices at UCL, visit our Equivalent offices page.

Meet the team


To find out who’s who in the Research Coordination Office, and to find out how to contact our staff, visit Our team page.

Core services and projects


We draw on our accumulated expertise to provide the following key services to research staff:

Research facilitation

We identify and communicate funding opportunities, provide bespoke support to researchers of all levels to help ensure the development of competitive, high-quality research proposals, and organise outreach activities such as grants skills and funder workshops.

Coordinating bids

Our team can act as coordinators when a large, ambitious bid is being considered. We coordinate and manage teams, acting as project managers, bringing our expertise and experience of the process to increase the chance of a successful bid. If you are considering such a project, get in touch with us.

"A successful strategic funding application is not just about writing a strong proposal, but also building a strong team, coordinating extensive costings, contracts, securing senior management approval and institutional commitments, navigating UCL’s internal systems and processes, as well as interview preparation."

Sarah Welsher, RCO Strategic Coordinator

Our staff have variously consulted on, or coordinated many major recent initiatives, grants and partnerships. The role that we play in these large strategic projects varies on a case-by-case basis.

UCL Research Communities

The RCO coordinates large, cross-disciplinary research communities that span UCL and our partner organisations, fostering interaction and collaboration. We coordinate and support the life and medical sciences Cancer, Personalised Medicine, and Neuroscience Research Domains, UCL Health of the Public, and UCL AI for People and Planet.

Working closely with the academic leads for each Domain, we develop and implement the strategy for the Domains; facilitating interactions across faculties and developing research collaborations and partnerships through events, networks and forums; showcasing expertise; and supporting strategic funding applications and capacity building activities.

Events and community building

Our team manage the end-to-end delivery of a range of events, reflecting the wide areas of research that we support. Many of these aim to realise, and further develop, the goals of the UCL Research Domains. Our events portfolio includes:

Early Career Researcher events

These regular seminars and workshops cover a variety of topics relevant to early career researchers (ECRs), with the aim of providing opportunities for ECRs to meet their peers, share ideas and experiences, and initiate collaborations. Topics include grant writing, career development and public engagement.

Grants skills events

Grant funding workshops and meetings help to train academics in the art of writing persuasive and successful grant applications. Attendees will pick up invaluable tips and insider knowledge about the grant application process, receive constructive feedback on their own applications, and get the opportunity to network and meet potential collaborators.

Research Funder events

We arrange networking events for research funders and academics in order to enable networking and provide an opportunity for funders to learn about new research activities, and researchers to gain a deeper understanding of what potential funders are looking for.

Conferences, workshops and symposia

These events are designed to raise the profile of UCL’s life and medical sciences research activities, showcase expertise, and provide a platform on which to build cross-disciplinary research communities, partnerships and collaborations in academia and industry. 

We also promote external events that may be of interest to Life and Medical Sciences researchers and others. The majority of events supported by our team are free to attend and open to everyone, unless otherwise stated.

All RCO organised events are publicised on our Events page on the UCL Research Domains website.

You can also receive event news and updates via our Twitter feed and Domain newsletters.