Collaborating across the UK research infrastructure
At the SMCL NGS Hub, we see ourselves as part of the wider UK research infrastructure. Our aim is to support excellent academic and translational research not only in Cambridge, but across the UK and beyond.
We are committed to an open and collaborative approach. This includes offering the same academic pricing to all UK higher education institutions, ensuring that access to our expertise, technologies and workflows is not limited by institutional boundaries (note: VAT applies to projects external to the University of Cambridge, or where the University of Cambridge is not a grant partner).
We are committed to driving the efficient procurement, coordination, and use of specialist NGS equipment across the UK research ecosystem. Our approach is to maximise national capacity, reduce unnecessary duplication, and drive down processing costs per sample, so that advanced multi-omic technologies can support more researchers, more projects, and more ambitious science. This ensures that investment in cutting-edge platforms delivers greater scientific value, wider impact, and stronger support for UK translational and clinical research.
We are particularly keen to strengthen collaborations with other NIHR Biomedical Research Centres and aligned translational research infrastructures. By working more closely across BRC centres, we aim to support shared access to technologies, harmonised workflows, cross-site expertise, and collaborative studies that can accelerate the translation of multi-omic research into patient benefit.
We welcome opportunities to collaborate with academic groups, research facilities, NIHR BRC centres, and national infrastructure partners. This may include sharing expertise, co-developing workflows and validations, expanding capacity, supporting access to certified Olink platforms, all NGS-based proteomic technologies, and next-generation sequencing pipelines, or exploring joint training and knowledge-exchange initiatives.
By working together, we aim to strengthen the national research community and help researchers access the technologies, expertise and support needed to deliver high-quality multi-omic research.