The Department of Paediatrics is a focal point for research for children and young people across Cambridge.
Our research themes capture investigators both in the Department of Paediatrics and other departments and research institutes throughout Cambridge.
Cambridge clinical investigators (Austin, Beardsall, Pathan) recruit ~1000 children into NIHR portfolio clinical research studies per annum.
The main site for clinical research on the Addenbrooke’s campus is the clinical research facility, which can accommodate primarily ambulatory subjects, and in-patient units themselves.
Our laboratory-based research (Rowitch, Murray, Hovorka, Behjati and Zilbauer) takes place in various departments and institutes in and around Cambridge including the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, Institute for Metabolic Science and Wellcome Sanger Institute. The Department of Paediatrics shares joint arrangements for salary support with NHS consultants and offers honorary or associate titles.
The Whole Life
Cambridge Children’s Hospital will feature an embedded University of Cambridge research institute, dedicated to improving the health of children and young people. Our over-arching strategy, representing new thinking in the field of paediatrics, will be research on the origins of mental and physical health conditions to identify patients at risk. This will enable earlier interventions to improve the life course trajectories.
Our approach will account for the complexity of the environment, including psychosocial and economic circumstances. To this end, our research values diversity, equity and inclusion in the setting of the UK’s National Health Service.
The Research Institute will be on the ground floor of the hospital; a visible laboratory, housing 20 different research groups and 250 investigators.
There will be a focus on addressing the top causes of death or disability in children and young people in the UK, with individual centres on perinatal care, genomic medicine, mental health and neurodevelopment, infection and inflammation, childhood cancer and diabetes and obesity. These will be led by experts in these fields from the University working hand in hand with NHS consultants.
Under the Microscope

A newsletter created for patients by the Paediatric Gastroenterology Research Team, led by Dr. Matthias Zilbauer