https://www.cam.ac.uk
Founded
1209Description
Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is a collegiate public research institution. Its 800-year history makes it the fourth-oldest surviving university in the world and the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world.
Cambridge serves more than 18,000 students from all cultures and corners of the world. Nearly 4,000 of its students are international and hail from over 120 different countries. In addition, the university’s International Summer Schools offer 150 courses to students from more than 50 countries.
The university is split into 31 autonomous colleges where students receive small group teaching sessions known as college supervisions.
Six schools are spread across the university’s colleges, housing roughly 150 faculties and other institutions. The six schools are: Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Humanities and Social Sciences, Physical Sciences and Technology.
The campus is located in the centre of the city of Cambridge, with its numerous listed buildings and many of the older colleges situated on or near the river Cam.
The university is home to over 100 libraries, which, between them, hold more than 15 million books in total. In the main Cambridge University library alone, which is a legal depository, there are eight million holdings. The university also owns nine arts, scientific and cultural museums that are open to the public throughout the year, as well as a botanical garden.
Cambridge University Press is a non-school institution and operates as the university’s publishing business. With over 50 offices worldwide, its publishing list is made up of 45,000 titles spanning academic research, professional development, research journals, education and bible publishing.
In total, 92 affiliates of the university have been awarded Nobel Prizes, covering every category.
The university’s endowment is valued at nearly £6 billion.
Specific details
Location
The Old Schools, Trinity Lane, Cambridge , CB2 1TN, East of England, United Kingdom
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News
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Cambridge celebrates historic Varsity Athletics competition and World Athletics recognitionThursday, 05 June 2025First held in 1864, Varsity Athletics remains an enduring symbol of sporting excellence and tradition. This year’s event, hosted at Wilberforce Road Sports Ground in Cambridge, was made even more special by a prestigious recognition from World Athletics: the awarding of two Heritage Plaques to Cambridge University Athletic Club (CUAC) and the Varsity Match itself. World Athletics Heritage Plaque Founded in 1857, CUAC is one of the oldest athletics clubs in the world. It played a pivotal role in the development of modern athletics, contributing to the rules and formats that govern the sport today. "Cambridge University Athletic Club is among a small group of pioneering organisations that helped shape modern athletics," World Athletics noted in its announcement. In honour of this distinguished history, World Athletics CEO and Cambridge alumnus Jon Ridgeon (Magdalene College) returned to his alma mater to present the plaques during the Varsity weekend. Athletics Varsity 2025 Living up to the historic occasion, fierce but friendly rivalry was on display, with Cambridge securing victories in: Men’s Blues Para Team Men's 2nds Women’s 2nds In an interview with Varsity newspaper ahead of the Athletics Varsity, CUAC President Jess Poon reflected on the club’s evolution and the importance of the Varsity Matches. She highlighted the club’s embrace of inclusivity, particularly with the expansion of women's and para-athletics matches, and celebrated the sense of tradition and camaraderie that continues to define the event. Athletics Varsity plaque giving This milestone celebration aligns closely with the University’s priority to encourage participation in sport and physical activity at all levels. Sport plays a critical role in supporting mental wellbeing, fostering leadership and communication skills, and enhancing employability among students. Across the University, activity priorities include: Club Support Programme: Aimed at helping sports clubs like CUAC deliver high-quality training and competition experiences, ensuring sustainability and growth. University of Cambridge Athlete Performance Programme (UCAPP): Providing specialist support for high-performing athletes, enabling them to excel both in their sport and academically. Active Students Initiative: Promoting sport and physical activity for all students, regardless of ability or experience level, through programmes like 'Give it a Go', designed to remove barriers and encourage lifelong engagement with physical activity. Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Chair of the Sports Committee, has expressed the University’s enthusiasm for supporting sport: "Involvement in physical activity and sports provides a much-needed release from the intense pressures that are associated with life at Cambridge. I firmly believe that these are inherently complementary pursuits, allowing participants to achieve a balance between their work commitments and their own personal wellbeing." The 150th Men's, 50th Women's, and 2nd Para Athletics Varsity Matches not only celebrated a rich and trailblazing past but also pointed towards a vibrant future, powered by a University-wide commitment to excellence, inclusion, and wellbeing in sport. As Cambridge looks to build on this legacy, the University invites alumni and supporters to help sustain and grow these opportunities - ensuring that generations of Cambridge students continue to benefit from the profound personal, academic, and societal advantages that sport and physical activity bring. Find out more information on how to support sport at Cambridge. Varsity Athletics team The world’s oldest athletics competition — the annual contest between Cambridge and Oxford — reached a landmark celebration this year, commemorating 150 years of men's competition, 50 years of women's competition, and the second year of the para-athletics Varsity. Museum of World Athletics / James Rhodes The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. YesLicence type: Attribution
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Cambridge celebrates historic Varsity Athletics competition and World Athletics recognitionThursday, 05 June 2025First held in 1864, Varsity Athletics remains an enduring symbol of sporting excellence and tradition. This year’s event, hosted at Wilberforce Road Sports Ground in Cambridge, was made even more special by a prestigious recognition from World Athletics: the awarding of two Heritage Plaques to Cambridge University Athletic Club (CUAC) and the Varsity Match itself. World Athletics Heritage Plaque Founded in 1857, CUAC is one of the oldest athletics clubs in the world. It played a pivotal role in the development of modern athletics, contributing to the rules and formats that govern the sport today. "Cambridge University Athletic Club is among a small group of pioneering organisations that helped shape modern athletics," World Athletics noted in its announcement. In honour of this distinguished history, World Athletics CEO and Cambridge alumnus Jon Ridgeon (Magdalene College) returned to his alma mater to present the plaques during the Varsity weekend. Athletics Varsity 2025 Living up to the historic occasion, fierce but friendly rivalry was on display, with Cambridge securing victories in: Men’s Blues Para Team Men's 2nds Women’s 2nds In an interview with Varsity newspaper ahead of the Athletics Varsity, CUAC President Jess Poon reflected on the club’s evolution and the importance of the Varsity Matches. She highlighted the club’s embrace of inclusivity, particularly with the expansion of women's and para-athletics matches, and celebrated the sense of tradition and camaraderie that continues to define the event. Athletics Varsity plaque giving This milestone celebration aligns closely with the University’s priority to encourage participation in sport and physical activity at all levels. Sport plays a critical role in supporting mental wellbeing, fostering leadership and communication skills, and enhancing employability among students. Across the University, activity priorities include: Club Support Programme: Aimed at helping sports clubs like CUAC deliver high-quality training and competition experiences, ensuring sustainability and growth. University of Cambridge Athlete Performance Programme (UCAPP): Providing specialist support for high-performing athletes, enabling them to excel both in their sport and academically. Active Students Initiative: Promoting sport and physical activity for all students, regardless of ability or experience level, through programmes like 'Give it a Go', designed to remove barriers and encourage lifelong engagement with physical activity. Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Chair of the Sports Committee, has expressed the University’s enthusiasm for supporting sport: "Involvement in physical activity and sports provides a much-needed release from the intense pressures that are associated with life at Cambridge. I firmly believe that these are inherently complementary pursuits, allowing participants to achieve a balance between their work commitments and their own personal wellbeing." The 150th Men's, 50th Women's, and 2nd Para Athletics Varsity Matches not only celebrated a rich and trailblazing past but also pointed towards a vibrant future, powered by a University-wide commitment to excellence, inclusion, and wellbeing in sport. As Cambridge looks to build on this legacy, the University invites alumni and supporters to help sustain and grow these opportunities - ensuring that generations of Cambridge students continue to benefit from the profound personal, academic, and societal advantages that sport and physical activity bring. Find out more information on how to support sport at Cambridge. Varsity Athletics team The world’s oldest athletics competition — the annual contest between Cambridge and Oxford — reached a landmark celebration this year, commemorating 150 years of men's competition, 50 years of women's competition, and the second year of the para-athletics Varsity. Museum of World Athletics / James Rhodes The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. YesLicence type: Attribution
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‘AI scientist’ suggests combinations of widely available non-cancer drugs can kill cancer cellsWednesday, 04 June 2025The research team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the GPT-4 large language model (LLM) to identify hidden patterns buried in the mountains of scientific literature to identify potential new cancer drugs. To test their approach, the researchers prompted GPT-4 to identify potential new drug combinations that could have a significant impact on a breast cancer cell line commonly used in medical research. They instructed it to avoid standard cancer drugs, identify drugs that would attack cancer cells while not harming healthy cells, and prioritise drugs that were affordable and approved by regulators. The drug combinations suggested by GPT-4 were then tested by human scientists, both in combination and individually, to measure their effectiveness against breast cancer cells. In the first lab-based test, three of the 12 drug combinations suggested by GPT-4 worked better than current breast cancer drugs. The LLM then learned from these tests and suggested a further four combinations, three of which also showed promising results. The results, reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, represent the first instance of a closed-loop system where experimental results guided an LLM, and LLM outputs – interpreted by human scientists – guided further experiments. The researchers say that tools such as LLMs are not a replacement for scientists, but could instead be supervised AI researchers, with the ability to originate, adapt and accelerate discovery in areas like cancer research. Often, LLMs such as GPT-4 return results that aren’t true, known as hallucinations. However, in scientific research, hallucinations can sometimes be beneficial if they lead to new ideas that are worth testing. “Supervised LLMs offer a scalable, imaginative layer of scientific exploration, and can help us as human scientists explore new paths that we hadn’t thought of before,” said Professor Ross King from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, who led the research. “This can be useful in areas such as drug discovery, where there are many thousands of compounds to search through.” Based on the prompts provided by the human scientists, GPT-4 selected drugs based on the interplay between biological reasoning and hidden patterns in the scientific literature. “This is not automation replacing scientists, but a new kind of collaboration,” said co-author Dr Hector Zenil from King’s College London. “Guided by expert prompts and experimental feedback, the AI functioned like a tireless research partner—rapidly navigating an immense hypothesis space and proposing ideas that would take humans alone far longer to reach.” The hallucinations – normally viewed as flaws – became a feature, generating unconventional combinations worth testing and validating in the lab. The human scientists inspected the mechanistic reasons the LLM found to suggest these combinations in the first place, feeding the system back and forth in multiple iterations. By exploring subtle synergies and overlooked pathways, GPT-4 helped identify six promising drug pairs, all tested through lab experiments. Among the combinations, simvastatin (commonly used to lower cholesterol) and disulfiram (used in alcohol dependence) stood out against breast cancer cells. Some of these combinations show potential for further research in therapeutic repurposing. These drugs, while not traditionally associated with cancer care, could be potential cancer treatments, although they would first have to go through extensive clinical trials. “This study demonstrates how AI can be woven directly into the iterative loop of scientific discovery, enabling adaptive, data-informed hypothesis generation and validation in real time,” said Zenil. “The capacity of supervised LLMs to propose hypotheses across disciplines, incorporate prior results, and collaborate across iterations marks a new frontier in scientific research,” said King. “An AI scientist is no longer a metaphor without experimental validation: it can now be a collaborator in the scientific process.” The research was supported in part by the Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Reference: Abbi Abdel-Rehim et al. ‘Scientific Hypothesis Generation by Large Language Models: Laboratory Validation in Breast Cancer Treatment.’ Journal of the Royal Society Interface (2025). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2024.0674 An ‘AI scientist’, working in collaboration with human scientists, has found that combinations of cheap and safe drugs – used to treat conditions such as high cholesterol and alcohol dependence – could also be effective at treating cancer, a promising new approach to drug discovery. STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty ImagesScanning electron microscope image of breast cancer cells The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. Yes
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‘AI scientist’ suggests combinations of widely available non-cancer drugs can kill cancer cellsWednesday, 04 June 2025The research team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the GPT-4 large language model (LLM) to identify hidden patterns buried in the mountains of scientific literature to identify potential new cancer drugs. To test their approach, the researchers prompted GPT-4 to identify potential new drug combinations that could have a significant impact on a breast cancer cell line commonly used in medical research. They instructed it to avoid standard cancer drugs, identify drugs that would attack cancer cells while not harming healthy cells, and prioritise drugs that were affordable and approved by regulators. The drug combinations suggested by GPT-4 were then tested by human scientists, both in combination and individually, to measure their effectiveness against breast cancer cells. In the first lab-based test, three of the 12 drug combinations suggested by GPT-4 worked better than current breast cancer drugs. The LLM then learned from these tests and suggested a further four combinations, three of which also showed promising results. The results, reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, represent the first instance of a closed-loop system where experimental results guided an LLM, and LLM outputs – interpreted by human scientists – guided further experiments. The researchers say that tools such as LLMs are not a replacement for scientists, but could instead be supervised AI researchers, with the ability to originate, adapt and accelerate discovery in areas like cancer research. Often, LLMs such as GPT-4 return results that aren’t true, known as hallucinations. However, in scientific research, hallucinations can sometimes be beneficial if they lead to new ideas that are worth testing. “Supervised LLMs offer a scalable, imaginative layer of scientific exploration, and can help us as human scientists explore new paths that we hadn’t thought of before,” said Professor Ross King from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, who led the research. “This can be useful in areas such as drug discovery, where there are many thousands of compounds to search through.” Based on the prompts provided by the human scientists, GPT-4 selected drugs based on the interplay between biological reasoning and hidden patterns in the scientific literature. “This is not automation replacing scientists, but a new kind of collaboration,” said co-author Dr Hector Zenil from King’s College London. “Guided by expert prompts and experimental feedback, the AI functioned like a tireless research partner—rapidly navigating an immense hypothesis space and proposing ideas that would take humans alone far longer to reach.” The hallucinations – normally viewed as flaws – became a feature, generating unconventional combinations worth testing and validating in the lab. The human scientists inspected the mechanistic reasons the LLM found to suggest these combinations in the first place, feeding the system back and forth in multiple iterations. By exploring subtle synergies and overlooked pathways, GPT-4 helped identify six promising drug pairs, all tested through lab experiments. Among the combinations, simvastatin (commonly used to lower cholesterol) and disulfiram (used in alcohol dependence) stood out against breast cancer cells. Some of these combinations show potential for further research in therapeutic repurposing. These drugs, while not traditionally associated with cancer care, could be potential cancer treatments, although they would first have to go through extensive clinical trials. “This study demonstrates how AI can be woven directly into the iterative loop of scientific discovery, enabling adaptive, data-informed hypothesis generation and validation in real time,” said Zenil. “The capacity of supervised LLMs to propose hypotheses across disciplines, incorporate prior results, and collaborate across iterations marks a new frontier in scientific research,” said King. “An AI scientist is no longer a metaphor without experimental validation: it can now be a collaborator in the scientific process.” The research was supported in part by the Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Find out more about how Cambridge is changing the story of cancer. Reference: Abbi Abdel-Rehim et al. ‘Scientific Hypothesis Generation by Large Language Models: Laboratory Validation in Breast Cancer Treatment.’ Journal of the Royal Society Interface (2025). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2024.0674 An ‘AI scientist’, working in collaboration with human scientists, has found that combinations of cheap and safe drugs – used to treat conditions such as high cholesterol and alcohol dependence – could also be effective at treating cancer, a promising new approach to drug discovery. STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty ImagesScanning electron microscope image of breast cancer cells The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms. Yes
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