The University of NSW is a founding member of the Group of Eight, a coalition of Australia's leading research-intensive universities, and of the prestigious international network Universitas 21. UNSW has an international reputation for excellence in research, being ranked 85th worldwide in the 2012/13 The Times Higher Education world rankings, and awarded Five Stars+ in the 2012 QS Stars rating system, which measures performance against international benchmarks. In addition, UNSW was rated in the top group for all three measures in the 2013 Good Universities Guide.

Research in BABS spans fundamental to applied sciences, and includes human bacterial pathogens, hepatitis viruses, tissue engineering, cancer, bioinformatics, functional genomics, extremophiles, astrobiology, and more. Research is grouped into four main disciplines:

• Environmental Microbiology
• Systems and Cellular Biology
• Molecular Medicine
• Infectious Disease

In addition, BABS is home to a number of research centres that conduct cutting-edge research and provide specialist services in their respective fields. Research is also greatly facilitated by the presence of a number of discrete research facilities that the School has developed and maintains.

The School is particularly proud of its productivity in terms of publications, in both fundamental and applied science. Staff and students publish their work in international journals with high impact factors and visibility within their respective fields.

We are committed to high quality research training, and employ a large number of postdoctoral researchers on a wide variety of grants and research projects. Another important group for BABS is our postgraduate students, the next generation of researchers, with HDR (Higher Degree by Research) student numbers growing substantially in recent years.

Underpinning this, BABS runs an annual research seminar program, hosting high-profile presenters drawn from a wide range of Science disciplines and institutions both here in Australia as well as overseas.