CareLoop

CareLoop is a digital tool developed by The University of Manchester with NHS clinicians and people with lived experience to help prevent mental health crises and relapse. A mobile app and clinician dashboard enable users to track daily wellbeing while care teams identify early warning signs and provide timely support. Clinical trials show it is safe, effective and supports preventative care, helping reduce pressure on inpatient services. Now advancing through CareLoop Health, the innovation is being adopted more widely, with NHS rollout and international pilots supporting its continued development and role in improving equitable access to care.

UK-Kenya Partnership: Advancing Intersectional Gender Equality

Furniture4Reuse Store

The University of Manchester’s Furniture4Reuse store extends the life of surplus furniture by redistributing it across campus and to local charities and community groups. The initiative supports sustainability by reducing waste and carbon emissions, while helping projects like Biko Bikes, a student‑led initiative making sustainable travel more accessible. It also supports Essentials, the University’s student basic needs centre, alongside local organisations including schools and Hulme Community Garden Centre, ensuring valuable resources are reused where they are most needed and create a positive impact across the community. 

Check out this video for more information. 

Partnership with Co-op Academy Medlock primary school

The University of Manchester is partnered with Co-op Academy Medlock in Ardwick, strengthening connections between the University and the local community. University of Manchester students deliver a range of engaging presentations, on topics including their passions, cultures and educational journeys, to pupils at the school. For the pupils, this provides valuable opportunities to learn about new topics and perspectives. For the university students, it offers meaningful experience in planning and delivering presentations, developing public speaking skills, and building confidence while engaging with the local community.

100% Zero Landfill on Main Campus

The University of Manchester are 100% ‘Zero Landfill’ on Main Campus. Our general, clinical, and offensive waste is now fully diverted from landfill. Instead of landfill, our non-recyclable general waste now goes through a process known as Energy from Waste (EfW), a waste management method that converts non-recyclables into electricity and heat. Once waste is collected on campus, it is transported to a waste transfer station nearby, where it is ‘bulked up’ before being sent to an EfW facility. At the EfW facility, it is burned under safe and controlled conditions. The process of burning the waste generates heat, which is then used to power steam turbines and produce electricity, ensuring that every by-product (which includes ash and metals) is recovered and reused.

Infected Blood Inquiry Memorial 

The University of Manchester is the permanent home of the Infected Blood Inquiry Memorial, which honours the more than 30,000 people who were infected with HIV, Hepatitis and vCJD after receiving contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. Its presence at the University will support research, teaching and public engagement, particularly in areas relating to patient safety, ethical practice in healthcare, trust, and health inequalities. Through exhibitions, teaching programmes and public events the memorial will remain accessible to the public, helping to ensure that the experiences of those affected continue to be heard and understood.  

Greater Manchester Colleges partnership 

The University of Manchester, in partnership with Wigan & Leigh College and the wider Greater Manchester Colleges network, deliver a programme that places PhD researchers directly into Further Education (FE) classrooms across the region. Developed through the Greater Manchester Civic University Agreement, the initiative enables postgraduate researchers to teach up to 20 hours per week in FE settings, providing specialist expertise in priority subjects such as engineering, STEM and digital skills. In turn, the programme offers researchers valuable, paid teaching experience while helping colleges tackle critical local and regional skills gaps.

No Time to Waste

Our No Time to Waste sustainability platform makes it easy and rewarding for staff and students to build sustainable habits. Users are rewarded green points, that lead to monthly prizes, for logging sustainable activities. To further encourage sustainable habits our travel app CommuteUoM is designed to make low-carbon commuting easier by helping staff and students to carpool safely, plan public transport routes and more.

CARA (Council for At Risk Academics)

We are a founding member of Cara (the Council for At Risk Academics) and offer up to ten Cara Fellowships each year. Our Cara Fellowships provide sanctuary and financial assistance to academics worldwide who cannot safely continue their work due to conflict, oppression, or persecution. Additionally offering support through personalised guidance about visas, advice about accommodation and help with planning for the future. 

Food Made Good 3-star rating

The University catering services, including UniCafe outlets, Food In Residence, and HospitalityOnCampus, hold a three-star rating in the Food Made Good Standard, awarded by the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA). This certification recognises outstanding leadership in sustainable and ethical sourcing (procurement), community impact, and environmental responsibility across University food services, and is valid until December 2027. The Food Made Good assessment scored us:  

• 79% for Sourcing – due to our Fairtrade leadership, responsible and local procurement, and prioritisation of plant-forward menus with higher welfare animal products .
• 88% for Society – for treating colleagues fairly, promoting healthy menus, and operation of community fridges on campus . 
• 84% for Environment – reflecting our strong action of waste reduction, Net Zero commitments, and student engagement . 

Floreeda Partnership

The University of Manchester and Manchester School of Architecture are partnered with acrylic manufacturer Floreeda to repurpose plastic waste through REFLO, a circular recycling process that transforms student modelmaking offcuts into new acrylic sheets. Floreeda’s REFLO process converts end-of-life acrylic into granules, which are levelled, heated, and pressed into new sheets, enabling multiple reuses and supporting a closed-loop, circular economy. 

• Find out more on the University partnership 
• Find out more on REFLO

Sustainability Champions Programme

The Sustainability Champions Programme is an opportunity for passionate students to take on an additional role alongside their degree programme to help promote sustainable change. Student champions are organised into teams based upon their personal interests in environmental sustainability. These subject areas include nature, travel and transport, energy and carbon, sustainable food, reuse and recycling and our hedgehog champions. In teams, our champions plan and deliver events to promote sustainability, for instance events focused on reducing the environmental impact of Halloween as a celebration, demonstrating how the Champions programme is a vital mechanism in embedding sustainable thinking through community engagement and social practice. 

Find out more here. 

Imprinted Diagnostics

Imprinted Diagnostics, a University of Manchester spinout, has created a diagnostic device designed to redefine emergency cardiac care by delivering rapid, lab quality diagnostics at the point of need. The portable device delivers accurate troponin readings from a finger prick in under 30 minutes, dramatically reducing patient waiting times in emergency and critical care settings. By eliminating the need for external lab processing, frontline clinicians can make faster, life-saving decisions. After successful early tests on 50 patient samples, Imprinted Diagnostics is now preparing to scale up development, supported by a £75,000 UnitM innovation award from the University. 

Visit Imprinted Diagnostics to find out more. 

Building Bridges Project

Through the Building Bridges Project, we organise community gatherings across different venues in South Manchester to explore how to foster social cohesion and tackle hate crime. These events aim to bring together diverse communities, creating safe spaces to listen, share experiences, and build understanding. These local gatherings have enabled community members, including asylum seekers and Muslim residents, who were particularly affected by the unrest, to share their stories, hopes and fears, exploring how grassroots leaders can lead challenging but constructive conversations within their communities. To support this work, we facilitated mediated dialogue training for 20 local leaders involved in the project. The training, delivered by the Peace Collective, helped participants develop the skills needed to hold respectful and inclusive discussions on complex social issues. 

SEED Changemakers

SEED Change-makers is a student-led  initiative developed by the University’s School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED). It empowers undergraduate and postgraduate students to drive meaningful change. The programme provides a dynamic platform for students to transform their passions into impactful action through leading and collaborating on innovative social responsibility projects. For example, students launched the Give It, Don’t Bin It campaign to reduce waste left behind in student accommodation during move-out periods, and they have hosted thought-provoking lectures on active citizenship and rethinking sustainable community support.  

200 for 200: Bicentenary Recruitment Initiative

In 2024 were proud to create 200 meaningful employment opportunities for members of our local community. This initiative, led by the University in partnership with Aspire Recruitment, successfully reached and supported candidates from a wide range of underrepresented backgrounds. Of those engaged, 76.4% identified as BAME, 60.4% as female, 23.4% as LGBTQ+, and 12.4% declared a disability. 

EDI programmes for staff

We offer five EDI Leadership programmes, aimed at developing a diverse pool of leaders by equipping colleagues from groups that are statistically underrepresented in leadership. These programmes include: 

• Aurora: For colleagues who identify as women  

• Disability Leadership Training: For disabled academic, research and PS colleagues 

• LGBTQ+ Leadership Training: For LGBTQ+ academic, research and PS colleagues 

• Stellar HE: For Black, Asian, and ethnically diverse PS, academic and research colleagues  

• 100 Black Women Professors Now (BWPN): For colleagues who identify as women (+non-binary) from African / African Caribbean or mixed Black diaspora. This includes academic and research colleagues, and PhD students. 

Beyond the Creative City network

Through shared research and a knowledge exchange agenda, Creative Manchester’s Beyond the Creative City network brings together international academics from across disciplines including economics, urban planning, geography, sociology, cultural policy and creative practice. Together, the network is identifying challenges, producing peer-reviewed research, policy engagement and creative digital outputs for places and communities that have been previously left behind by national policy and investment.

At the University’s Productivity Institute, world-leading experts work directly with policymakers and businesses to better understand, measure and enable improvements in productivity across the UK, including living standards and wellbeing.

Improving quality of life for millions

With more than 300 million people worldwide suffering from serious fungal infections and 2 million of these individuals dying each year as a result, our researchers set about changing the understanding and treatment of Aspergillus disease to improve patient quality of life and survival.

Through international collaboration and research, Aspergillus antigen and antibody tests are now listed as essential diagnostics by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The world’s first frontline therapy for the disease has also been licensed, along with the creation of the world’s first national clinical centre for fungal disease.

Developing computer-controlled 3D freeform surface weaving

Researchers at Manchester’s Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering collaborated with the Chinese University of Hong Kong to explore computer-controlled 3D freeform surface weaving. This new computer-controlled weaving technology enables the creation of woven structures as 3D shapes using non-traditional material threads with high-bending stiffness.

The research looks at how the computational solution converts inputted 3D freeform surfaces into weaving operations (as W-code) to guide the operation of the system. The process has the potential to work with a number of different materials including cotton threads, conductive threads and optical fibers and could be used in the future to print materials used in the treatment of various joint issues.

Reducing carbon emissions in transport and industry

In collaboration with our University, researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research worked alongside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and a team of modellers at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency to devise ways to reduce carbon emissions in the transport and industry sectors.

With these sectors continuing to grow and low-carbon technologies still in their infancy, our researchers identified new ways to accelerate decarbonisation. By developing and applying a novel framework, they discovered that the greatest reductions came from cuts in carbon dioxide and energy intensity. Other contributing measures included less air travel, reduced transportation of fossil fuels and more locally-produced goods.

Partnership with Electricity North West Limited

Our researchers partnered with Electricity North West Limited (ENWL) to help it better manage its network, improve sustainability and save money for the company and customers. Researchers developed a matrix that can be used to model the relationship between network voltage and demand. They were then able to demonstrate how reducing the amount of energy used at peak times, creating less of a strain on the National Grid, could result in cost reductions for everyone. This has enabled ENWL to increase its customer base and connect more renewable energy sources to the network to help meet the UK government’s 2050 carbon-reduction targets.

Partnership with Arvia Technology

Our researchers partnered with water treatment company Arvia Technology to develop an electrochemical process that dramatically reduces wastewater pollution levels and enables water recycling across several industries.

Delivering on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 – ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all – the Arvia process has helped to reduce water demand and reliance on freshwater supplies, along with lowering pollutant levels from pesticides, pharmaceutical residues and natural hormones. The process is the first to use both capture and destruction methods to clean the wastewater. The solution has since been delivered to more than 25 companies in 11 countries.

Tackling complex issues in African cities

Funded by the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC) was established by our Global Development Institute. In collaboration with international partners, the ACRC tackles complex problems in some of Africa’s fastest-growing urban areas. Working closely with local partners and NGOs over several years, the project integrates systems thinking with rigorous political analysis to help catalyse sustainable and inclusive urban development.

Supporting cultural strengthening and revitalisation

Our Manchester Museum welcomed a delegation from the Aboriginal Anindilyakwa community of Groote Eylandt for the formal return of 174 items of cultural heritage. Over a three-year period, the Museum worked with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and the Anindilyakwa Land Council to return items to their rightful home and inspire future generations.