We enjoy collaborations with a wide range of partners from industry, government and other research institutions, many of them via our research institute, IGFS. Foremost among these is a formal, Strategic Alliance with the NI Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute (AFBI) in NI, seeking to accelerate building and sharing capacity, both in infrastructure and people, addressing key challenges in more sustainable agriculture and food, and supporting policy, industry and society.

Completed in 2019, a new 12,000m² £39M state-of-the-art research facility has created a new home for our School and Institute, accommodating approximately 500 research staff and students in a modern, fit-for-purpose building with state-of-the-art laboratories, teaching and office space.

The building has also been designed with IDR in mind and includes many social spaces and breakout areas to encourage interaction between researchers from different disciplines.

Research income has tripled in recent years, with £59M investment in the past seven years, for example, from diverse sources, including EU, UKRI, National Institutes of Health USA (NIH) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).  During this time, research and academic staff numbers have also risen steadily, with FTE staff more than doubling (now sitting at 72.8). Numbers of PhD students have tripled in the same time period. Strategic, senior academic appointments have been made to bolster expertise in key areas – systems biology, digital innovation, global-change biology, nutrition and food integrity. 

We strongly and actively support the principle of open science, supported by dedicated support staff. In recent years, open access has been embedded as the norm across Queen’s, and staff have access to resources including a dedicated website, training and an institutional data repository. Our staff are also able to obtain central University funding to publish in open-science journals and the Uni has deals with many publishers, ensuring that publication fees are not a barrier. Our Research Data Management Policy aligns closely to the UK concordat on Open Research Data and researchers strive to ensure their research is findable, accessible, re-useable and interoperable (FAIR). They also aim to keep stakeholders and funders up-to-speed with research and progress, eg. via Researchfish.

The School is very active in this area and recently renewed its Athena Swan Gold Award - making it a third, consecutive Gold.

The School of Biological Sciences holds one of only two departmental Athena Swan Gold awards at Queen's – and one of only 12 in the UK. This puts our School in the Top 1.5% for gender equality in UK universities. The Athena Swan team regularly meets and hosts activities, including a recent all-Ireland ‘sharing of best practice’ event, addressed by Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell from Oxford University. It also pursues actions to help make the culture and environment more inclusive.

A group of PGRs, Post-Docs, academic and support staff recently formed a School and Institute green-impact team, initiating a number of activities and events, including a successful climate-change seminar series. 

The volunteers have also developed a wormery – a first for Queen’s! - to help reduce food waste generated by users of our building and make compost to fertilise green spaces aimed at improving biodiversity around campus.

Our researchers are supported to undertake regular media activity, from local BBC up to international coverage in outlets including the New York Times, CNN, the South China Morning Post and the Times of India. 

They also regularly write for The Conversation UK website; nearly 14.5 million people worldwide have read articles by Queen's researchers on this platform. In 2020, IGFS produced a series of podcasts on the impact of Covid-19 on global food systems which reached overseas audiences in USA, Spain, Japan, Egypt, Indonesia and India.