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Research Highlights

University of Glasgow

Glasgow, United Kingdom

A 575-year-old research powerhouse whose strengths run from gravitational waves and quantum engineering to virus research and precision medicine.

Founded in 1451, the University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of the United Kingdom's most research-intensive institutions. A member of the Russell Group, it spans four colleges covering medicine, science and engineering, social sciences and the arts, and its research footprint runs from the Gothic Gilbert Scott Building on Gilmorehill to the Advanced Research Centre, the hub of its interdisciplinary programme. Signature strengths include the Institute for Gravitational Research, which developed the mirror suspensions at the heart of the LIGO detectors; the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, one of Europe's leading virology centres; the James Watt School of Engineering, a force in quantum technologies, sensing and flexible electronics; and close partnership with the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute in precision oncology. With the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre and deep roots in medicine stretching back to Lord Kelvin's physics and Joseph Lister's antisepsis, Glasgow pairs heritage with a distinctly contemporary research agenda.

A year of research

18 highlights, November 2025 to October 2026
October 2026

Light used to read quantum spins inside porous crystals

Glasgow engineers and international partners have optically measured electron spin resonance in a metal-organic framework for the first time, opening a route towards ultra-sensitive quantum chemical sensors.

September 2026

3D-printed materials gain the power to sense and map their own damage

By adapting a medical imaging technique, engineers in Glasgow and Sydney have created lattice metamaterials that report in real time where damage is forming and how it spreads.

September 2026

Place-names lead ecologists to Scotland's hidden oyster beds

Project Eisirean has used Gaelic and Scots coastal place-names as ecological evidence, locating a previously undocumented historic oyster bed on Scotland's west coast and informing restoration plans.

August 2026

Fruit and honey sugars helped power the evolving human brain

A model spanning four million years of human evolution, co-authored in Glasgow, argues that natural sugars met the glucose demands of growing brains long before cooking unlocked starchy foods.

July 2026

Smart surfaces help future 6G networks cut through interference

A Glasgow-led team has built and lab-tested a framework that lets reconfigurable intelligent surfaces filter out electromagnetic interference, delivering signals to intended users while bypassing eavesdroppers.

July 2026

How Earth's forces shaped the Roof of the World

Glasgow geoscientists and Chinese collaborators have shown that the western and central Tibetan Plateau rose on different schedules, tracking the Indian plate's slow dive beneath Asia.

June 2026

Dinosaur-killing impact drove a hydrothermal system for eight million years

Argon dating of rocks from the Chicxulub crater's peak ring, performed at Glasgow's SUERC, shows the impact's underground hot-water system persisted around four times longer than previously estimated.

May 2026

Gravitational-wave catalogue swells with 161 new black hole collisions

Glasgow's Institute for Gravitational Research celebrates GWTC-5.0, which lifts the total of detected signals to 390 and includes evidence of second-generation black holes and the clearest signal yet recorded.

May 2026

Dominant fish swallow more microplastics than their shoalmates

A Glasgow study of European minnows finds that social rank shapes microplastic exposure, with dominant individuals at greater risk and clear hierarchies helping groups distinguish food from pollution.

April 2026

Usutu virus detected in Scotland for the first time

Surveillance triggered by a cluster of sick and dead blackbirds on the Isle of Arran has confirmed the mosquito-borne Usutu virus in Scotland, with the Glasgow-led Mosquito Scotland programme central to the response.

March 2026

Cells spin a molecular web that traps invading viral genomes

Scientists at Glasgow's Centre for Virus Research and the University of Dundee have discovered that the protein ZNFX1 quarantines viral RNA in a sticky web of ubiquitin chains, slowing infection in its earliest hours.

March 2026

AI lifts breast cancer detection by more than ten per cent

The UK's first comprehensive evaluation of AI in routine breast screening, with a Glasgow lead author, found a 10.4 per cent increase in cancers detected and scope to cut reader workload by over 30 per cent.

February 2026

Geologists may have solved the mystery of the Green River's uphill route

A Glasgow-led study argues that a blob of dense rock dripping into the mantle temporarily lowered the Uinta Mountains, letting the Green River carve a 700-metre canyon straight through the range.

January 2026

Compostable circuits could slash the environmental cost of electronics

Glasgow engineers have printed zinc-based circuits on paper and bioplastics that match conventional boards in testing, with 99 per cent of materials disposable through composting or a vinegar bath.

January 2026

Enzyme discovery points to a way of re-energising cancer-fighting T cells

Glasgow scientists have identified CMTR1 as a key regulator of the energy supply in T cells, offering a potential route to reversing the immune exhaustion that lets cancers escape attack.

December 2025

Laser-engineered nanowire films shield flexible electronics

A Glasgow nanofabrication method aligns silver nanowires on bendable transparent film and welds them with laser pulses, blocking over 99.97 per cent of electromagnetic interference while staying 83 per cent transparent.

November 2025

Single gene found to switch on mammals' winter behaviour

Glasgow researchers have identified Dio3 as the gene that sets the internal seasonal clock, triggering hibernation-like winter states in hamsters and timing the return to summer form around six months later.

November 2025

Bioengineered bone marrow puts leukaemia therapies to a tougher test

A Glasgow-developed hydrogel model of the bone marrow niche has revealed that conventional lab testing overestimated a CAR T-cell therapy's effectiveness against acute myeloid leukaemia and missed harm to healthy cells.