Study and Projects
Students are expected to be well organised and prepared to undertake private study (approximately 20 - 25 hours per week) in addition to formal teaching sessions. Students are encouraged to read widely using journals for reviews and original articles, in addition to textbooks. Most lectures will be accompanied by handouts and reading lists.
Students are expected to make use of electronic access to all Imperial College Libraries, which allows on-line printing from many journals. In addition, the Hammersmith Campus Wellcome Library stocks a wide range of books and journals. Tuition in the correct use of facilities will be given by library staff, and students are expected to be able to perform literature searches.
Projects
Allocation of projects and supervisors takes into account wherever possible the academic interests and career aspirations of the individual student. Research projects are designed to take full advantage of local interests and expertise, thus giving students experience of internationally competitive research.
The final six months of the course, from March to September inclusive, is devoted to the laboratory-based research project and completion of a dissertation based on this work. All the projects provide training in contemporary cellular and molecular techniques applied to reproductive and developmental biology.
The research projects are supervised by staff of the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology and are within their specialist research areas. These include:
- Stem Cell Biology (Véronique Azuara, Wei Cui, Pascale Guillot, Nobu Kudo)
- Ovarian Physiology, Gametogenesis and Embryogenesis (Steve Franks, Kate Hardy)
- Maternal & Placental Pathophysiology (Rosemary Fisher, Mark Sullivan, Catherine Williamson)
- Parturition (Phil Bennett, Mark Sullivan)
- Fetal and Neonatal Stress (Vivette Glover)
- Cell Signalling and Gene Expression in Reproduction and Development (Jan Brosens, Mark Christian, Nick Dibb, Aylin Hanyaloglu, Ilpo Huhtaniemi, Malcolm Parker)
