transCampus / Dresden / London

In March 2015, King’s College London appointed Professor Stefan Bornstein as transCampus Dean, the first role of its kind for King’s. The remit of this role is to drive forward university partnership and collaborative research initiatives between two of Europe’s leading academic institutions, King's College London and Technische Universität Dresden. 

The unique advantage of the transCampus initiative lies in the formation of a "Star Alliance" which aims to bring the resources, critical mass and individual strengths of each institution together to create an even larger, united and complementary academic and clinical campus. The joint efforts of two leading universities in Europe will create a partnership of scientific strength in Biomedicine, able to compete with other leading institutions in the United States and across the rest of the globe.

Combining the resources in a translational effort on a joined medical campus will also benefit patients, offering access to some of the best health care that may not be available in their individual countries or any other country around the world. 

The transCampus will also act as a wide academic platform from which students from both universities can move freely and benefit from the respective academic programmes.

Using the transCampus model, clinical trials for rare diseases will become more efficient as a result of looking at larger and more diverse populations. Smaller and unique transplantation and regenerative medicine programmes such as islet transplantation will serve as a role model programme for Europe and beyond. Combining bone marrow transplantation programmes in our institutions that have traditionally been one of the largest in their individual countries will form the largest programme in the world. This will allow for landmark clinical studies and is setting the standards for further treatment on a much larger scale. 

This promising endeavour has had a gradual build-up over the last 2 years, increasing in academic substance and administrative infrastructure. We have already initiated the establishment of crucial scientific liaisons, have been awarded diverse academic grants, have received support from industry and biotechnology and have launched the transCampus Student Exchange Programme.