Research structure and facilities

The University of Manchester Library is the only National Research Library in the north of England. With more than ten million items, it is the largest non-legal deposit library in the UK, holding the most extensive digital collections of any UK academic library. 

Our research IT infrastructure includes:

• High Performance and High Throughput Computing (HPC/HTC) including ‘free-at-point-of-use’ access for smaller-scale users;
• a Research Software Engineer team to provide a fully cost-recovered service;
• research applications support and training covering programming, software engineering and research IT facilities;
• research data storage (8TB) per researcher, with higher requirements costed into grants;
• significant IT investment to extend the digitisation, curation and access to the University’s cultural assets and to support Open Research.

Our Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health offers extensive platform technologies, most operated with, or available to, NHS and academic partners, including:

• an extensive Biological Services Facility with a wide range of model organisms and genome editing;
• the Wellcome Centre for Cell-Matrix Research and the Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre (the largest single-site discovery proteomics centre in Europe);
• the Proton Beam Therapy and Research Centre (jointly run with The Christie hospital), and the CRUK Major Cancer Centre and CRUK Radiotherapy Centre of Excellence;
• the Oglesby Cancer Research Building.

Our Faculty of Humanities offers discipline-focused and dedicated research laboratories, workshops, and performance spaces, as well as an ESRC-funded secure data access facility (safepod), the collections of the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, the Whitworth (art gallery) and Manchester Museum.

• The Whitworth collections are in a building transformed by an award-winning £15m investment in 2015, which included improved research and engagement facilities and new exhibition spaces.
• The Manchester Museum collections span more than one million objects, with research collaborations and public engagement further enabled by the £13m investment (2019–22) to create expanded exhibition space and new South Asia and Chinese Culture galleries.

Both are major assets for our interdisciplinary Creative Manchester platform.

Our Faculty of Science and Engineering has a substantial portfolio of large equipment infrastructure, shared by research groups and other academic and industry partners. Some examples include:

• our Jodrell Bank Observatory which operates the UK’s e-MERLIN telescope array and hosts the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) headquarters;
• the Henry Royce Institute. Manchester is the hub for the UK’s national facility for advanced materials, which is accessible to external higher education institutions and industry. The 2D materials core theme of the Royce is underpinned by equipment offered through our National Graphene Institute and the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre;
• the world-leading Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility;
• the National Grid Power Systems Research Centre which is largest UK university high-voltage laboratory;
• a number of EPSRC National Research Facilities including our Michael Barber Centre for Collaborative Mass Spectrometry and the Dalton Nuclear Institute’s Cumbrian Facility.