The Wellcome Genome Campus is a unique home for genomics and biodata science to flourish from initial idea through to world-changing innovations, technology, tools and ideas.

One of the largest concentrations of genomics and biodata in the world

The Campus is one of the largest concentrations of genomics and biodata in the world, bringing together over 2,600 people including the employees, PhD students and visiting workers of two Institutes as well as people working in specialist and innovative genomics and bioinformatics companies.

We are the home to academic excellence.

There are 92 faculty staff across EMBL-EBI and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and over 100 PhD students. Amongst its staff and alumni, EMBL-EBI has two Fellows of the Royal Society, and three EMBOs. The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has five EMBOs, 5 Fellows of the Royal Society and a Nobel prize winner amongst its employees and alumni.

Over the last five years the two Institutes have produced a combined total of circa 3,800 research papers. Many of these papers are amongst the world’s most cited papers.

The Campus brings together leading talent and supports its scientists and bioinformaticians with the best facilities, best services and fantastic learning and collaboration opportunities. The range of knowledge, facilities and scientific operations on Campus allow scientists at the Campus to utilise different avenues of investigation, from computational models, to cell models, organoids, genome sequencing, imaging and model organisms, all on one site.

Over 7,000 billion letters of DNA are sequenced at the Wellcome Genome Campus every day, generating huge volumes of new data.

3,700bn bases of DNA are sequenced per day at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The huge volumes of data generated at the Campus and aggregated internationally by EMBL-EBI is essential for greater learning and understanding in genomics. As Europe’s provider of biological data curation, analysis and data tools, EMBL-EBI processes over 20 million data requests to its websites and databases every day and processes over 10 million computational jobs per month. There are 42 petabytes of storage at the Sanger Institute’s onsite data storage facility. EMBL-EBI has more than another 80 petabytes of storage offsite.

The Campus has enormous geographic reach though its partnerships and collaborations with industry, government and academia.

The collaborative and international nature of the genomics and bioinformatics industry is reflected by the international diversity of our employees. Across the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and EMBL-EBI our staff come from over 77 nations and five continents. Collectively, 45% of the Institutes’ personnel are from outside of the UK, bringing together a unique combination of international knowledge, experience and Scientific networks.

A place of discovery and innovation, translating fundamental science into real world benefit

As well as academic success, our results are evidenced by the new scientific ground that we break, by the new learning, technology and know-how that we develop.

As a Campus, we are greater than the sum of our parts. As a result, some of the world’s largest corporations are seeking partnerships here, which is a great endorsement of our achievements to date.

Adrian Ibrahim, Head of Technology Transfer and Business Development, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

As a cluster, we are greater than the sum of our parts i.e. the institutions and people that locate here. This is largely due to our ability to scale-up research ideas whilst maintaining scientific excellence, and the fact that we are free to pursue any avenue of life science exploration that we feel is important to the future of humanity.

Over 190 people now work in companies at the Wellcome Genome Campus, and following the opening of our new BioData Innovation Centre in 2016, we are set to expand as a home to innovative genomics and biodata industry and to increase our role in the genomics innovation ecosystem.

At the Wellcome Genome Campus, we are leading on vital training and development in genomics and bioinformatics.

Skills in biodata and genomics are likely to become an increasing bottleneck to the pace and potential development of the industry that technology now permits.

Over 200,000 people undertake EMBL-EBI online training annually. Our Advanced Courses and Scientific Conferences team organise 50 events a year attended by over 3,500 scientists and clinicians.

There are also over 10,000 visits to our Conference Centre each year. We are also developing Masters degrees for the NHS in partnership with Cambridge University. We also offer a rich variety of continuous learning and sharing of ideas on Campus. In 2016 there were over 355 scientific lectures and seminars given by a combination of Campus staff and external academic leaders that were open to all employees on Campus.

As genomes and genomic variation start to have increasing impact on us all, and relevance to our healthcare and treatment, the Wellcome Genome Campus aims to play an important role in enabling the public to understand and engage with their genomes.

We aim to facilitate discourse and generate debate around some of the challenging ethical questions that genomic science generates.

Our learning resource for schools, Yourgenome.org has received over 2 million visits. Over 10,000 have actively participated in the Wellcome Genome Campus Society and Ethics Research and the Campus hosts over 5,000 visits per annum. We aim to expand upon this as part of our vision to open up the Campus, make it more permeable, better able to host visitors and training, and as we continue to make it the place for learning and engagement with genomes and biodata.