About Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is one of seven preclinical Departments of the School of Biomedical Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences based at Clayton Campus.  The Department has been ranked as the premier Department in its discipline since the inception of ARC benchmarking of Australian Departments in 1998 and has an international reputation for both high quality research and postgraduate teaching and has recognised strengths in molecular, cellular and structural biology.  It provides undergraduate teaching programmes in science, biomedical and medical streams together with extensive research programmes.  On average there are 100 PhD students and 30 final year (honours) undergraduates undertaking research training in the Department and affiliated institutes.

The Department numbers over 200 professional and research staff in a productive mix of academic, research and commercial research and development groups.  In recent years members of the Department have been highly successful in securing competitive research funding and commercial income across a range of projects of medical and academic interest and many eminent researchers have been recruited both locally and internationally. The Department currently participates in 2 Cooperative Research Centres, 3 NH&MRC 5-year program grants, 3 ARC Centres of Excellence and a number of ARC Linkage grants with commercial partners.  In addition to over 80 peer-reviewed project grants and 20 personal fellowships (including 3 ARC Federation Fellows) there are over a dozen research and development grants with Australian and international companies. In 2008, the Department attracted over $23m of funding across more than 120 research grants.

Research and teaching programmes are supported by extensive core facilities including x-ray crystallography, proteomics, bio informatics/molecular modelling and imaging facilities with associated state-of-the-art equipment and instrumentation. The research functions of the Department are organised into over 30 major groups, each comprising a senior research head supervising a group of research staff and students ranging in size from 5-25 people per group.

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