Entrepreneurship, innovation and engagement are an embedded part of our research culture. Supported by our Research Highways, we have a clear and disciplined focus on global and local economic and societal impact.
Queen Mary is a leading, research-intensive university. The University has been ranked joint 7th in the UK for the quality of its research (REF 2021).
We encourage our research community to collaborate across the world, maintaining an agile approach to individual and research group partnerships.
An international team of researchers, including from Queen Mary, discovered that thousands of ambient air quality monitoring stations around the world are unwittingly recording more than just atmospheric pollutants and dust: they are also likely collecting biodiversity data in the form of environmental DNA (eDNA).
This offers a potential solution for a global problem of how to measure biodiversity at a massive scale.
Air quality stations
In the wake of the 2022 mpox outbreak, Professor Chloe Orkin, MBE, mobilised an international collaboration of doctors to share information on the virus. Together, they published the first major piece of work on the emerging mpox outbreak which identified new clinical symptoms in people infected with the virus.
This and subsequent work informed the global response to the outbreak, helping doctors to better diagnose the specific strain of mpox people had. It also demonstrated the need to engage with communities most at risk of infection during a public health response.
Professor Orkin has since become one of the world’s leading experts on mpox and is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization on the condition.
Leading mpox research around the world
With climate change accelerating, the delicate balance which has allowed Ethiopian crop farmers to feed their families year-round is being disrupted.
Scientists from Queen Mary, the University of Greenwich and Kew Gardens worked together and visited the region to learn more about how local crops exist in their current environment, and to see how farmers could adapt their processes to better withstand the effects of climate change.
The team also worked closely with partners from Addis Ababa University, Hawassa University and the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute.
Ethiopian farmers and the effects of climate change