Saturday, May 2, 2009

Imperial College London

Imperial College London (officially The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine as titled in its Royal Charter) is a British university in London specializing in science, engineering, medicine and business.

Imperial is regularly placed in the top three in the Times National University League Table along with Oxford and Cambridge. Imperial was placed 5th overall in the world in the 2008 THES - QS World University Rankings of universities worldwide,and 27th in the world by the Shanghai Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities.

Imperial College London


Imperial's main campus is located in South Kensington in central London, on the boundary between the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster, with its front entrance on Exhibition Road. Formerly a constituent college of the University of London, Imperial became independent of the university on 8 July 2007, the 100th anniversary of its founding.

History

The origins of the various constituent elements of Imperial College can be traced back as far as the fifteenth century. The College of St Gregory and St Martin at Wye was originally founded in 1447 as a seminary, with an agricultural college being established at Wye in 1890s after the removal of the theological college. Wye College merged with Imperial College in 2000.

Charing Cross Hospital, Westminster Hospital and St Mary's Hospital medical schools were opened in 1823, 1834 and 1845 respectively.

The Royal School of Mines was founded by Sir Henry de la Beche in 1851. This laid one of the the foundation stones of scientific teaching in Britain. The Royal College of Science was established in 1881 and the City and Guilds College in 1884.

In 1907, the newly established board of education found that a need for higher technical education was necessary and a proposal to merge the City and Guilds College, the Royal School of Mines and the Royal College of Science was approved and passed, creating what is now the Imperial College of London. The signing of the Royal Charter granted by Edward VII was officially done on July 8 of 1907. The newly founded Imperial College was integrated into the University of London

The main campus of Imperial College is built on what was known as the Imperial Institute, which existed from 1887-1958. The Imperial Institute was an institution strongly biased towards scientific research that focused on industrial and commercial development that would benefit the Empire and its colonies

In later years, St Mary's Hospital Medical School (1988), the National Heart and Lung institute (1995), and the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School (1997) merged into the Imperial College School of Medicine, the fourth constituent college. The size of the Medical School was increased in 1997 with the merger with the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS) and the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and again in 2000 with a merger with the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology. Many medical academics were disturbed by the disappearance of the RPMS which had been a major force in British Medicine for decades.

Also in 2000, Imperial merged with Wye College, the University of London's agricultural college in Wye, Kent. It has been claimed that the merger might have been motivated by Imperial's interest in acquiring land owned by Wye College, rather than for academic reasons; Wye College accepted the merger because it was in financial difficulties. In December 2005, the college announced a science park programme at the Wye campus; however, this was abandoned in September 2006 following local environmental complaints that this programme would have a negative impact on the surrounding countryside. Wye College will now be run by the University of Kent from September 2007 in association with Imperial College London and Wye College, graduates will receive a degree from the University of Kent and an Imperial Associateship of Wye College.

In 1995, Imperial launched its own academic publishing house, Imperial College Press, in partnership with World Scientific.

In 2002, the constituent colleges were abolished in favour of a new faculty structure. A merger with University College London was proposed in October that year, but was called off a month later after protests from staff over fear of redundancies.


In 2003, the College was granted degree-awarding powers in its own right by the Privy Council. Exercising this power would be incompatible with remaining in the federal University of London; hence, on 9 December 2005, Imperial College announced that it would commence negotiations to secede from the federal University.The college became independent in July 2007 and the first students to register for an Imperial College degree were postgraduates beginning their course in October 2007, with the first undergraduates enrolling for an Imperial degree in October 2008. The first group of students to be awarded the Imperial College degree by default commenced their studies in 2008, but students already registered were offered the option of choosing to be awarded a University of London degree or an Imperial College degree. The first undergraduates to be awarded Imperial College degrees graduated in 2008.

Imperial College is a member of the Russell Group of Universities, AMBA, and the IDEA League. It is also considered a member of the "Golden Triangle". The College's official title is Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, which it used in public relations up to 2002.


Campus

Imperial College's activity is centred on its South Kensington campus, situated in an area with a high concentration of cultural and academic institutions known as the Albertopolis; the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal College of Music, the Royal College of Art and the Royal Albert Hall are all nearby. Imperial College has two other major campuses — at Silwood Park (near Ascot in Berkshire) and at Wye (near Ashford in Kent). The Imperial College NHS Trust runs multiple hospitals throughout Greater London and various medic lectures are conducted within these hospitals, including St. Mary's Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital, Northwick Park & St. Mark's Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital. The expansion of the South Kensington campus in the 1960s absorbed the site of the former Imperial Institute, designed by Thomas Collcutt, of which only the 287 foot (87 m) high Queen's Tower remains among the more modern buildings.

Extensive renovation continues throughout the College estate. Recent major projects include the Imperial College Business School, the Ethos sports centre, and Southside hall of residence. Current major projects include the new Eastside hall of residence, refurbishment of the Central Library, and reconstruction of the south-eastern quadrant of the campus.

Academic structure

Imperial offers both undergraduate and postgraduate education, with its research and teaching organised into three faculties, each headed by a principal: engineering, medicine and natural sciences. In addition to the three faculties, a business school exists as well as a humanities department. However, the humanities department's main purpose is to provide elective subjects and language courses outside the field of science for students in the other faculties and departments. Students are encouraged to take these classes either for credit or in their own time. Courses exist in a wide range of topics including philosophy; ethics in science and technology; history; modern literature and drama; art in the twentieth century; film studies. Language courses are available in French, German, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Dutch, Mandarin Chinese and Urdu. The humanities department also runs a full-time course in scientific translation.

For the 2005-06 academic year, Imperial College had a total full-time student body of more than 11,000. This comprised roughly 8,000 undergraduate students and 3,400 postgraduates. In addition there were over 900 part-time students, all postgraduates. 27% of students come from outside the European Union.

Imperial's male:female ratio for undergraduate students is uneven at approximately 65:35 overall and 10:1 in some engineering courses.


Academic reputation

Recent tables show that, despite being purely science-based, it is maintaining its high league table position, whilst topping most of the engineering and medicine tables. Imperial remains the only university other than Oxford and Cambridge, to have held one of the top two positions in a major British university league table, coming second to Cambridge in The Times 1999 and 2000 tables, pushing Oxford to third place.

According to the most recent RAE(Research Assessment Exercise) 2008, five subjects including Pure Mathematics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering are assessed to be the best in terms of the proportion of internationally recognized research quality.

Imperial is a home to 14 Nobel Laureates and 2 Fields Medalists, and over 6,000 academic staffs including some Nobel prize-winners, 66 Fellows of the Royal Society and 71 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Three quarters of the academics entered in the latest Research Assessment Exercise were in departments considered internationally outstanding – the highest proportion in any university – and almost all were in one of the top two categories.

The Department of Computing (DoC) was rated best in the UK, surpassing University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory for the first time in 2007, for Computer Science and IT in the Guardian University Guide (since 1 May 2007 it is assessed by the Guide under the 'Engineering: electronic and electrical' subject category due to its being part of the Faculty of Engineering). THES placed the Computing department 4th in world rankings for Computer Science. In 2004, 2006 and 2007 student(s) from the DoC were awarded the SET Student of the Year award.

The Financial Times placed Imperial College's Business School within the top 10 in Europe. The Business School is also consistently ranked in the top 10 worldwide for entrepreneurship. The business school also offers a full time MBA that is ranked 17th in Europe by the Financial Times and a part time Executive MBA programme that is ranked 4th in Europe.

Teams from Imperial College won University Challenge in both 1996 and 2001.

Faculty of Engineering
Aeronautics
Bioengineering
Chemical Engineering & Chemical Technology
Civil & Environmental Engineering
Computing
Earth Science & Engineering
Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Materials
Mechanical Engineering

Cross Faculty
Institute of Biomedical Engineering
Grantham Institute for Climate Change
Institute for Mathematical Sciences
Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology
Porter Institute
Energy Futures Lab

Faculty of Medicine
Clinical Sciences Division
Epidemiology, Public Health & Primary Care
Investigative Science
Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology
Medicine
National Heart & Lung Institute
Neuroscience & Mental Health
Surgery, Oncology, Reproductive Biology & Anaesthetics
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Imperial College Business School

Research Groups
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Organisation and Management
Finance and Accounting
Healthcare Management

Research Centres
Entrepreneurship Hub
Innovation Studies Centre
Centre for Health Management
Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Risk Management Laboratory

Faculty of Natural Sciences
Chemistry
Mathematics
Physics
Life Sciences
Biology
Cell & Molecular Biology
Molecular Biosciences
Centre for Environmental Policy
Other
Drug Discovery Centre
Graduate School of Engineering & Physical Sciences
Graduate School of Life Science & Medicine
Humanities
CHOSTM

Imperial College London was ranked 6th in the THES-QS 2008 World University Ranking

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