At Kavli INsD, our exceptional team of 38 faculty members and over 450 researchers represents diverse backgrounds in structural biology, biochemistry, pathology, chemistry, physics, physiology, and engineering. United by our shared focus on the nanoscale—the scale of proteins, viruses, and DNA—we are at the forefront of unravelling the mysteries of the most fundamental unit of life: the cell.
Together, we are shaping the future of nanoscience, fostering an inclusive and collaborative working culture, and driving breakthrough discoveries that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the world around us.
Because our institute covers two very important and highly topical subjects – research culture and interdisciplinarity we believe press coverage would be highly beneficial to publicize these messages.

Our institute also includes four current ERC Advanced, Starter and grantees (Professors Dame Carol Robinson and Molly Stevens, Professors Philipp Kukura and Andrew Baldwin. Importantly our research is also translational with both Refeyn and OMass therapeutics forming on the back of ERC Proof of concept funding.

For details please explore https://kavlinano.ox.ac.uk/research-themes.

Research Themes
1. Understanding biological function and regulation requires characterising biomolecules, and their structures and interactions. Developing new ways to study biomolecules is a major focus of our research, and the tools we develop underpin much of our work (e.g mass spectrometry, next-generation imaging, novel bioanalytic technologies, and biosensors and probes)

2. Advanced diagnostics & personalised medicine – our long-term goal is to democratise and personalise healthcare with ultrasensitive, cost-effective, user-friendly and mobile-connected diagnostic technologies.
Engineering & exploring the bio-material interface – we design biomaterials that influence the behaviour of cells at the interface of living and non-living matter by tweaking the surface chemistry and texture.
Bioelectronics & regenerative engineering – we have a growing portfolio of cutting-edge biomaterials designed to repair tissues, enhance regeneration and deliver drugs to targeted areas of the body.
Digital medicine & big data – we are harnessing the computational power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance understanding of molecules, materials, and processes.

3. Infectious disease poses a huge unmet global medical need leading to ‘spillover’ events – where pathogens move from wildlife or livestock to people – become more common, increasing the frequency of pandemics. We therefore urgently need to strengthen our pandemic preparedness. We are working on SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses, Dengue, Zika, Malaria, Hepatitis B & C

3. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major global health threat. In AMR, microbes such as bacteria develop the ability to survive exposure to the antibiotic drugs that are used to treat and prevent infections. Through the rise of resistance, medical procedures become riskier and common infections untreatable. It has become clear that tackling AMR requires a diverse range of actions, which include developing new antibiotics as well as rapid diagnostics that require understanding the modes of action of existing antibiotics and the mechanisms that fuel resistance, to identify new targets for novel antibiotics and to devise ways to rapidly detect the presence of drug resistance.

4. Neurodegenerative diseases and motor neuron disease, represent an increasing healthcare burden for an ageing global population. Largely untreatable, these diseases are already a leading cause of disability and their prevalence is rising. Our research aims to understand the fundamental biological processes that underlie normal brain development and are responsible for neurodegeneration, and to inform the development of treatments.

5. Amidst a persistent lack of direct evidence linking biological mechanisms to depression symptoms we are charting differences at the molecular level of receptors and transporters at the blood-brain barrier, to also develop effective biomarkers for anhedonic depression to better inform therapeutic intervention.