Birmingham's School of Chemistry has an illustrious history: Nobel Laureates Sir Norman Haworth, Francis Aston and Sir John Vane all worked or studied here. To this day, the School remains home to researchers of international standing. In the last Research Assessment Exercise, all of our research output was identified as ‘internationally recognised’, with 60% of our research activity judged to be internationally ‘excellent’ or ‘world-leading’.

Choose Chemistry at Birmingham and you will learn first-hand from world-leading researchers working in such diverse areas as Nanoscale Chemistry, Chemical Biology, Hydrogen Storage and Fuel Cells, and Synthesis of Therapeutic Molecules.

Chemical Imaging is another key research strength with the School being home to the Physical Sciences of Imaging in the Biological Sciences (PSIBS) Doctoral Training Centre , the only one of its kind in the country.

The School is home to around 400 undergraduates and has an excellent reputation for teaching; our lecturers are not only global experts in their field but also passionate about their subject. In the latest National Student Survey (NSS), 96% of students graduating from Birmingham Chemistry said they were satisfied with their degree.

All students in the School are provided with the following materials to support their studies throughout their time at Birmingham:

• safety spectacles
• laboratory book
• all laboratory equipment required throughout your time with us is provided free of charge
• a complete set of laboratory scripts in advance of all lab classes
• access to the University’s web-learning platform on which we offer additional learning support for lab classes (and, of course, lecture courses), including video recordings of lab procedures, which can be accessed at any time should you need to learn a new technique or indeed refresh one that you might have not practiced for a while
• your own ‘key skills’ framework is embedded within our laboratory course programme, which ensures you maintain a record of the techniques you acquire and develop during the course
• lecture notes for all courses
• chemistry data book
• membership of the Royal Society of Chemistry in your final year of study when arguably it is most valuable as you will be considering your career options
• free membership of the University’s Chemistry Society, ChemSoc, throughout your time at Birmingham
• access to University-wide schemes which have been recently introduced to improve employability and skills training for Birmingham graduates (for full details, please see: http://www.as.bham.ac.uk/careers/index.shtml). Two particularly valuable schemes include the Personal Skills Award (see: http://www.as.bham.ac.uk/psa/index.shtml) and ‘Progress’ which is also aimed at developing your study skills.

Birmingham Chemistry has benefited from significant recent investment in its teaching and research laboratories, as well as its analytical facilities, which house state-of-the-art instrumentation that you will be exposed to throughout your studies.

Funding has come from a variety of sources including Higher Education Funding Council for England, the European Research Development Fund, the local Government Regional Development agency: Advantage West Midlands and most recently a £1.4M  Core Capability Funding Award from the EPSRC.

We continue to enhance the practical learning experience for our undergraduates, most recently through the installation of Video Teaching Facilities in our Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories.