Centres of Excellence
Our global health research excellence spans medicine, physical sciences, mathematics, statistics, social sciences, ethics and beyond. We have the breadth and depth of knowledge to partner in major initiatives overseas, in addition to our substantial concentration of global health research in the UK.
The University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine’s Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health (CTMGH) is an umbrella network providing UK administrative support for and linking research centres based in Oxford (UK), Africa and Southeast Asia. Our aim is to provide world class research facilities, coupled with a strong ethos of capacity development.
CTMGH especially works to support three Wellcome Programmes headquartered in Kenya (KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP)), Viet Nam (Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU)) and Thailand (Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU)) with linked units in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Uganda, Nepal and Indonesia. These units focus on national health priorities and operate in close alignment to in-country host institutions. These are among the largest-scale and most enduring research facilities supported by any UK university overseas. Besides conducting research into infectious diseases, from basic research and diagnostics development to drug discovery, clinical trials and implementation, we also run training programmes for research scientists.
The KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) is a partnership between the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Oxford University and Wellcome units in Kenya and Uganda with an international network of collaborating sites. Whilst the programme began largely focusing on malaria, over the years research activities have grown to focus on addressing key health priorities including respiratory diseases, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS. Our scientific themes draw together researchers from different disciplines to work on high priority areas and enhance the rapid dissemination and uptake of findings into policy and practice. Work within and between themes is highly inter-disciplinary, and interaction between themes is common. We promote a broad and inclusive approach to scientific themes, providing flexible capacity to respond to emerging health challenges.
The Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) is a large-scale clinical and public health research unit with site offices in Viet Nam, Indonesia, and Nepal. Our vision is to have a local, regional and global impact on health by leading a locally-driven research programme on infectious diseases in Southeast Asia. Our research programme covers clinical and laboratory research with hospital and community-based patient populations, including epidemiology, immunology, host and pathogen genetics, molecular biology, microbiology and virology, mathematical modelling, bioinformatics, biostatistics, and social science.
The headquarters of the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) is in Thailand with sister units in Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. MORU is the focal point of the MORU Tropical Health Network (THN), a powerful network of closely linked units, departments, clinical study sites and laboratories that seek to reduce the human disease burden in the tropics by finding practical solutions to major tropical medical problems.
Driven by a coherent joint research agenda, the MORU THN’s current research focuses on malaria, melioidosis, scrub and murine typhus, drug-resistant infections, the causes and treatment of rural fever, sepsis, CNS infections, critical care medicine, maternal and neonatal health, TB and Chagas disease. We have a longstanding interest in medicine quality and in antimicrobial drug resistance, particularly artemisinin resistant falciparum malaria. Our COVID clinical trials network has evolved into the PLATCOV antiviral pharmacodynamic trial, which enables researchers to quickly, with small sample sizes, determine the effectiveness of antiviral drugs.
In addition to the three programmes above, the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health within the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM) is also home to the NDM Centre for Global Health Research (NDM-CGHR), a network of academic groups who work with collaborators from a large number of countries to generate evidence focussing on patients and addressing major public health issues globally. NDM-CGHR aims to build partnerships, advance equitable research, foster interdisciplinary research, build capacity and engage with decision makers. The NDM-CGHR is the base for postgraduate studies in tropical medicine, including the MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine. The NDM-CGHR include:
- Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOX) is a cross-university platform based at the University of Oxford with the aim of facilitating equitable and sustainable collaborations between researchers based at the University of Oxford and African universities, as well as increasing the number of African students pursuing postgraduate degrees in Oxford
- Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO) is a multidisciplinary coalition of the global infectious disease community. It provides an environment for equitable sharing of data, methods and infrastructure to generate evidence that improves outcomes for patients worldwide
- World Wide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) is a collaborative data-sharing framework that proved it is possible to produce policy-changing evidence from historical data
- Health Systems Collaborative works with low and middle-income country partners to improve and strengthen health services delivery and research globally. They employ methods spanning clinical epidemiology, social, organisational and implementation science
- The Global Health Network (TGHN) is a WHO collaborating centre for research information sharing, e-learning, and capacity development. The vision is to build equity in where health research happens, who leads and who benefits
- Antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial consumption and burden estimation (MICRoBE) and Drug-Resistant Infections and Disease Dynamics (DRIaDD). MICRoBE investigates antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic consumption to inform policy and interventions. DRIaDD aims to quantify the burden of drug resistant infections and other communicable disease globally, understand how resistance genes circulate in the population, and develop effective interventions
- Tropical Immunology focusses on the theme ‘Vaccines for the Vulnerable’, with research spanning infection, immunology and vaccinology
- Medicine Quality Research Group (MQRG) researches substandard and falsified (SF) medical products from a public health perspective, to better understand their epidemiology and impact on patients and communities, assessing techniques for detection of SF medicines and vaccines and exploring innovative forensics tools to estimate falsified medicine origin, to inform policy and action to improve global pharmaceutical product quality
The Pandemic Sciences Institute (PSI) is a multi-disciplinary centre of global research collaboration in pandemic sciences. Launched in 2022, PSI’s purpose is to help ensure that the world is better equipped to prepare for, identify and counter future pandemic threats.
The PSI’s senior investigators represent all four divisions of the University (Medical Sciences; Humanities; Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences; and Social Sciences). Our expertise includes infectious disease, vaccines, therapeutics, clinical trials, diagnostics, data analytics, epidemiology, ethics, history, social science and policy.
The China Kadoorie Biobank investigates the main genetic and environmental causes of common chronic diseases. It is a collaboration between the University of Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences that provides a wealth of data on lifestyle, behavioural and environmental exposures, information on genetic and other blood-based factors, and the long-term follow-up for disease outcomes, thus providing a foundation for an extensive programme of research into the risk factors and causes of a wide range of chronic diseases.