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About us

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funds, enables and delivers world-leading health and social care research that improves people's health and wellbeing and promotes economic growth.

NIHR Health Protection Research Units (HPRUs) undertake high quality research that enhances the ability of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to protect the public’s health and minimise the health impact of emergencies.

The NIHR HPRU in Genomics and Enabling Data is one of 14 HPRUs across England, part of a £58.7 million investment by the NIHR to protect the health of the nation. The NIHR HPRU in Genomics and Enabling Data is a partnership between the UKHSA and the University of Warwick, in collaboration with the Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance and the University of Cambridge.

The mission of the HPRU in Genomics and Enabling Data is to provide the methodological backbone required to improve national public health using new rich data sources. In particular, recent and ongoing developments in whole-genome sequencing technologies have a widely acknowledged great potential to help us improve public health, but this potential is currently incompletely realised due to a lack of sound and scalable methodology to interpret the data in the correct epidemiological context.

The HPRU involves members from four separate departments of the University of Warwick, namely the School of Life Sciences, the Warwick Medical School, the Department of Statistics and the Mathematics Institute. Our main base is within the Zeeman Institute which is located on the fifth floor of the Mathematical Sciences Building (MSB) on Central Campus.

About HPRUs

Each NIHR HPRU undertakes high quality research that is used by UKHSA to keep the public safe from current and emerging public health threats.

The NIHR HPRUs focus on collaboration and knowledge sharing, and play a pivotal role in maintaining and growing UKHSA’s scientific expertise and future workforce. The multidisciplinary centres of excellence also deliver responsive research to tackle emerging or potential public health emergencies.

Find out more about HPRUs

About the NIHR

NIHR's mission is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. The NIHR was established in 2006 and is primarily funded by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Working in partnership with the NHS, universities, local government, other research funders, patients and the public, the NIHR delivers and enables world-class research that transforms people’s lives, promotes economic growth and advances science.

Find out more about the NIHR