The School of Biosciences, based at Nottingham's Sutton Bonington campus, offers a first-class research and teaching environment for the food and drink sector. The School consistently tops league tables for the quality of its courses and research programmes.

Our degrees in Agriculture and Food Sciences were rated ‘excellent’ by the Sunday Times 2008 and as second in the UK by the Guardian 2009. The results of the UK Teaching Quality Assessment placed Nottingham top with the highest marks in the country across all bioscience subject areas. Likewise, research assessments classify our work as being of the highest international standards.

The University of Nottingham is a centre of excellence for brewing technologies and research. Our research teams work across the biosciences, chemistry, chemical engineering and environmental sciences to meet the demands of this industry by developing new processes and technologies, as well as offering postgraduate teaching to ensure the future supply of qualified graduates into this field.

Based in the Division of Food Sciences, research is led by Katherine Smart, Professor of Brewing Science - a Chair position sponsored by international brewer SABMiller.

Professor Smart's research has made a major contribution to the understanding of brewing yeast cell biology and its exploitation in the production of alcoholic beverages. She collaborates extensively with the world's brewing industry, with the primary aim of improving fermentation process efficiency and final product quality.

She has developed several rapid techniques for assessing yeast quality that have been adopted as standard methods by the industry. Her enthusiasm for brewing yeast led Professor Smart to become one of the first scientists in the UK to investigate the mechanism of ageing, and her work is widely considered to have made a major contribution. Recently she has concentrated on the mechanisms by which yeast sense and respond to stress.

Professor Smart's research has attracted significant funding from Research Councils, European funding agencies, charities - including the Royal Society - and industry. Since arriving at The University of Nottingham she has won funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), SABMiller, Coors and a charitable trust, the Institute of Brewing and Distilling.

Her research in this field is complemented by other research areas across the University.