Physics of Medicine

The Department is engaged in a major thrust at the interface between Physics, Biology and Medicine. The overall goal is to build a new discipline at the interface, where the quantitative and technical skills of the physicist are brought to bear on modern problems in biology and medicine. This is timely because of the new tools available both from the side of the physical sciences, nanotechnology and computational methods, and from biology, for example, genomics.

Historically, the Cavendish has played an important role in the development of tools and concepts in biology, most famously with the development of X-ray diffraction as a structural tool and the subsequent discovery of the structure of DNA. To maintain its leading role at this interface, the Department has recently hired 3 lecturers, and is recruiting a Herschel Smith Professor of the Physics of Medicine, which will be linked in future to the appointment of a Professor of Medical Physics in the Clinical School who will work with the West Cambridge programme.

We plan a £30 million building on the West Cambridge site to house this major new interdisciplinary research initiative. Funding for the construction of the first phase has been secured and this element of the building, due to complete in December 2008, will accommodate the primary research laboratories. The Phase II building, for which funds are now being raised, will provide research office space to bring in a computational and theory component, teaching space and further laboratory facilities.

A prime goal of the programme is training, from the level of advanced undergraduate, MPhil and PhD to 5-year research fellowships. The objective is to provide an environment where physical scientists can learn to attack biological problems, and biological scientists learn about the approach of physicists to key problems of medicine and biology.

This is a high-visibility initiative for the University, building on Cambridge's renowned strengths in biology, medicine and the physical sciences to address challenging problems in medicine and disease from a new vantage point.

The thrust of the project is two-fold:

• the funding of Phase II of the Physics of Medicine building.
• the endowment of a number of research studentships and fellowships to create a new breed of physicist-biologist and physicist-life-science scientists.