Faculty of Science and Health
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The Faculty of Science and Health is the University's largest faculty, and offers courses in environmental, health, and life sciences. We support these courses by offering an excellent research and innovation base and with our professional and clinical practice.
We work in strategic partnership with Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust (PHT), which aims to make both the Trust and the University centres of excellence for collaborative education, training and innovation.
By supporting new capacity, projects and infrastructure, the partnership will also enable us to deliver excellent research that's relevant to local people – with a particular focus on the development and application of new healthcare technologies.
We also work in partnership with many other businesses and organisations – from Adidas to the Ministry of Defence – and our graduates have gone on to pursue successful careers across many industries.
Academics, clinicians and practitioners work together to provide a rich learning experience for our students. Our courses reflect this by allowing our students to learn through a variety of methods – mixing practical, research and theoretical content alongside direct experiences, such as work placements, experimentation or simulations.
Our students also enjoy a shared working and learning environment that reflects the workplaces they will encounter when they graduate. Students participate in our innovation and research work, and build networks through these experiences.
More than 75% of our research is world leading or internationally excellent (Research Excellence Framework 2021) with 90% of our Impact Case Studies rated as outstanding or very considerable in terms of their reach and significance. This includes research developing environmental management tools to help the Ukraine better manage the Chernobyl exclusion zone, research that has transformed military and intelligence interrogation practice across security and counter-terrorism agencies, research improving detection rates of oesophageal cancer and water safety research that has informed international and UK policies, changed behaviour and practice, and saved lives.
Welcome to the Faculty of Science and Health - University of Portsmouth
Oakley Cheung
I chose Portsmouth because when I was looking at the statistics for my course, this university ranked really highly.
Devan Seedher
What stood out to me the most when it came to my time at Portsmouth was just the amount of support the lecturers gave. They all stood out to me as lecturers that really wanted to push you and actively develop you. I don't think I'd be where I'm at today without the level of support that the University of Portsmouth has given me.
Sam Millard
The staff at Portsmouth are what makes the degree at Portsmouth. The attitude, the enthusiasm and just passion for what they do.
Dr Joseph Moore
The key thing for us is the employable skills that you gain throughout your degree, a really good base of transferable skills that allow you to be successful in any workplace.
Priyanka Dey
They’ll have a full breadth of knowledge from theory to practical, to the textbook knowledge, to the most current research.
Oakley Cheung
The academic staff at Portsmouth are brilliant. They are so supportive, they're encouraging. They help you carve your path, really.
Dr Steven Dodsworth
Biology is so broad, whether that's more academic, so perhaps following a Ph.D. postgraduate research pathway or in an industrial lab, or we have students who've gone into teaching. All things that are still biology-focused. Of course, this also leads to many other different types of graduate jobs.
Ian Hendy
Charities, non-government organisations, and you could also work in the research industry as well. So there's a whole breadth of jobs you could find yourself doing.
Dr Sarah Reynolds
Studying a degree at Portsmouth is amazing. We have a whole range of analytical equipment. We have the South Downs, we have the New Forest right on our doorstep, and it gives us those great opportunities to be able to get out into the field very quickly.
Dr Joseph Moore
We have a number of different laboratory spaces. We also have the extreme environments laboratory, lots of equipment that can analyse how much we're breathing. We have motion capture systems, force plates and also sensors that allow us to measure the amount of muscle activity that's going on.
Dr David Rusling
What's really good about our course is we offer them the ability to go away and do independent research in one of our laboratories.
Debbie Withers
We're quite fortunate, we've got really good facilities. We've got two big open plan clinics. We've got our phantom head lab where we get to practise on plastic teeth before the students are let free on patients. So it just provides an as realistic as possible element of teaching.
Ian Hendy
But down here, at the institute of marine sciences, we have a large vessel where we can do some deep-sea benthic trials. We have a smaller vessel where we can map seagrass habitats and kelp forests using sonar. We have oyster restoration and we also have coastal development and looking at habitat fragmentation and restoration.
Dr Sarah Herbert
Down in the sim suite at the University of Portsmouth, which is a simulated hospital, we have lots of different patients come in with varying degrees of severity in terms of their trauma, and they will go to the different areas within the simulation hospital and be treated by our trainee nurses, clinicians, ACPs and doctors who are up at the hospital.
Laura Knight
The impact on our students is getting them used to what would be expected of them as a student if something like this happened whilst they're out in clinical.
Leanne Proops
At the University of Portsmouth, we really pride ourselves in having all of our staff being research active.
Melissa Hernandez
We get to talk with the professors and they encourage us., you can, any time, come to me. I'm gaining the skills that I didn't have when I graduated doing undergrad.
Dr Joseph Moore
We can really promise you that you're going to be taught by enthusiastic experts and we're going to be really focused on ensuring that your time university is going to set yourself up to get that dream job and be a success in your future career.
Lina Hilner
Knowing that my research will hopefully have a real life impact makes me feel very proud.
Explore our faculty
Teaching
Explore the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees we offer within the following areas.
Research
Explore the work we're doing across the 8 research areas that sit within the Faculty of Science and Health.
Biological Sciences
We're exploring how life on Earth has evolved over time, the huge ecological consequences of human activity, and the growing threat posed by antibiotic resistance.
Dental and Oral Health
Our Dental and Oral Health research contributes to the development of evidence-based health care for patients and the wider community, and towards the high-quality education of the dental team.
Earth and Environmental Sciences
With the future of our planet under threat from environmental crises such as climate change, we're examining our planet and the evolution of life – and using our findings to protect it.
Health and Social Care
Our research deals with the most-pressing health and wellbeing issues facing society – from the challenges of caring for an ageing population, to the importance of delivering effective health and social care to the most under-represented, vulnerable or isolated groups in society.
Pharmacy, Pharmacology and Biomedical Sciences
We're growing our understanding of how the body functions in health, how it malfunctions in disease, and the genetic and molecular drivers of physical and mental illnesses to find new, more effective treatments for patients.
Physical and Human Geography
We're exploring the causes and effects of social and environmental crises – from worsening inequality and political disharmony, to pollution and climate change – and searching for new ways to tackle these global challenges.
Psychology
We're exploring topics from child development of social skills and eye witness testimony, to the evolution of primate facial expressions and the factors affecting drug use.
Sport and Exercise Science
We're focused on enhancing human performance and health – from helping elite sports men and women to win Olympic medals, to developing safety guidelines for sporting bodies, and improving the quality of life of individuals living with chronic disease.
Our research centres
Much of our exceptional research takes place within the following cross-disciplinary research centres – find out more below.
Centre for Enzyme Innovation
At the Centre for Enzyme Innovation, we are working to solve one of the most pressing environmental issues facing our planet.
Institute of Life Sciences and Healthcare
We're exploring disciplinary boundaries to discover, understand and develop knowledge for the benefit of the environment and humankind.
Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology
In the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, we're exploring evolutionary processes and comparing humans with other animals, to study the origins of behaviour.
International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology
The ICRFP has an established international reputation for conducting a broad range of criminological and forensic psychology research.
Centre for interaction, development and diversity
In the Centre for Interaction, Development and Diversity, we study psychological phenomena in relation to the contexts and situations in which they emerge.
Centre for Applied Geosciences
At the Centre for Applied Geosciences, we're investigating natural and manmade hazards and geo-heritage conservation.
