President's Address 2026

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome colleagues, students, and alumni of Imperial

And welcome to our collaborators, partners and supporters from all over the world.

It’s been twelve months since the last time I addressed you from this lectern and reminded you of Imperial’s founding purpose: “to be useful”.

Over those twelve months, we’ve lived up to that purpose.

Eleven Imperial researchers are contributing to the IPCC’s Climate Change report — that’s more than any other organization in the world.

Our research breakthroughs included the application of an AI-led stethoscope to detect complex heart conditions within seconds, resulting in earlier treatment and reduced hospital stays.

And we produced over 50 student startups and 10 deep tech staff startups—that’s an average of five a month.

Thanks to your great work, it’s been another very successful year for Imperial - once again, retaining our place in the QS World University Rankings as the top university in Europe and the second in the world.

But outside our walls, the world has changed a great deal.

So I’d like to begin today by quoting an alumnus, H. G. Wells who studied Biology at the Royal College of Science more than a century ago.

In the 1930s, Wells wrote: “The world has plainly become much darker and more dangerous.”

“Open free speech” was under threat; “natural resources” had been wasted; and “Violence [had] made headway against the world’s peace.”

The answer to these crises—thought Wells—was clear: “More science, more interchange and more co-ordination.”^[1]

Only through science – with what he termed its “disinterested devotion to great ends” – would humanity find its way out of violence and division.

 

Ninety-five years later, Wells’ words ring truer than ever as we are faced with wars, an energy crisis and global instability.

I’m afraid that we are living through dark and dangerous times.

In conversations I have had with global leaders over the past year, I’ve been glad to hear a growing realization on their part that the future of humanity will be decided by science.

Last July, President Emmanuel Macron came to Imperial, to mark the launch of the Ayrton-Bleriot Engineering Lab.

He said that, in response to the great challenges Europe now faces, the first answer has to be “science, science, science”.

“Investing in fundamental science”, Macron said, is an absolute “necessity” for us all from now on.

I couldn’t agree more.

On behalf of the institution where Fleming discovered penicillin by accident…

I can say with absolute confidence that the scientific method is the best means humanity has ever developed…

Both to tackle the urgent challenges we face as a species…

And to unlock new possibilities we never dared to imagine.

 

But there’s a problem.

Twenty-first century science is international by definition.

And, yet, this is shaping up to be a century of mounting tensions and isolationism.

Universities like Imperial must resist this tide.

The crises we face today do not respect international borders - climate collapse, biodiversity loss, famine, drought, antimicrobial resistance, pandemics.

And no nation of Earth has the power to surmount them alone — not even the great superpowers.

The challenges before humanity demand an international response – they demand, not isolationism, but even more international collaboration.

So I commend the UK government for negotiating bilateral research agreements with partners including Germany, Canada, Japan and Singapore.

Along with the UK’s ongoing participation in entities such as CERN, the European Space Agency and the EU’S Research Framework Programme

These agreements enable us to pool our talent and resources.

That means we find solutions faster to the challenges we all share.

We were glad, too, to see the Erasmus scheme finally restored for UK students…

So they can, once again, share the opportunities their European peers take for granted: to broaden their horizons and expand their minds.

And we were delighted this year to be named as one of the twelve research institutions who will get a share of the government’s fifty-four million-pound Global Talent Fund.

This will enable us to recruit even more of the world’s top researchers: to bring them, their teams, and their world-changing research, right here, to London.

That’s good for Imperial, it’s good for the UK, and it’s good for the world.

But let me be frank.

Universities can no longer take international collaboration for granted.

Brexit showed us that.

The de-funding by the US government of large population health programmes in the Global South showed us that.

And recent events in the Middle East and the associated diplomatic tensions, even among allies, threaten to complicate matters further.

These troubled times require us to be more pro-active and more strategic than ever before in building alliances with trusted like-minded international partners to meet the global challenges we face.

Broadening and deepening our international partnerships is a core tenet of the strategy we launched two years ago: Science for Humanity.

Today, I’ll use this address to talk you through the progress we’ve made so far…

And to share with you how we are planning to be even more proactive in the future…

To connect our students, our research, and our innovation ecosystems to global networks…

for the benefit of society and the health of our planet

as a catalyst of economic growth …

and, very importantly, for the UK’s future resilience.

As an institution at the vanguard of science and technology, we cannot just participate in global conversations…

We must lead and shape them.

And we must encourage like-minded international partners to come to the table to work with us to bring about global change.

 

That leadership begins with our world-class STEMB students, over half of whom come to Imperial from outside the UK.

Imperial is a magnet for the brightest young minds from all over the world.

Yes, international students contribute around £37 billion per year to the UK economy.

And yes, we know from the government's own data that the majority return to their home countries after graduation.

But narrow discussions about immigration policy or higher education finances utterly fail to capture the huge net benefit international students represent to the UK…

The ideas and perspectives they bring to our campuses

The richness and diversity of cultures and experiences they expose our UK students to

Their appetite for innovation and entrepreneurship - so many of our student start-ups have at least one international student as a founder.

How highly they are sought after by tech-intensives UK business and industry after graduation

And, for anyone who doubts the soft power that our international graduates afford the UK…

I invite you to join me at an Imperial alumni event in Bengaluru, Berlin or Boston…

And just listen to how passionately our brilliant graduates advocate for Imperial and the UK. 

The value of our international students is inestimable.

This is why we’re beefing up our scholarship support for international students so that an Imperial education is accessible to both UK and international students, irrespective of financial means.

We recently launched our biggest ever scholarship programme for India – our Future Leaders Scholarships.

And we are planning a further step change in our scholarship support for international students – our Imperial Inspires Programme - funded by our Campaign for Imperial.

Yes, Imperial is a UK university, with deep roots in London.

And we take our responsibility to home students and to our local communities very seriously.

But as one of the world’s top universities we have a wider role to play.

So many of the international students go on to become global leaders: in academia; in medicine; in industry, and in politics.

We are in the privileged position to equip them with knowledge, skills, values and judgment to lead responsibly.

That is to everyone’s benefit: including the UK’s.

So we will continue to do all we can to bring the best students to Imperial from across the UK and across the world.

At the same time, we are expanding overseas opportunities for all our students – UK and international

After all, almost every student who has the opportunity to spend time abroad describes it as a life-changing experience.

Take it from me.

It was during my time studying abroad – in London – at the Hammersmith Hospital – now part of Imperial – as a medical student in 1981 that I was inspired to pursue an academic career.

Imperial’s new Global Hubs – which I will return to later in my address - in Singapore, San Francisco, Accra and Bengaluru - represent a huge expansion in the portfolio of opportunities available to our students…

Especially when it comes to hands-on innovation and entrepreneurship.

Current Imperial students have already had the chance to pitch their startups and connect with industry mentors in Silicon Valley…

And others have joined forces with peers in West Africa, where they have designed new medical diagnostic tailored to local needs.

All this alongside their Imperial degrees!

Opportunities like this are what makes Imperial such a special place.

We have never been and will never be an ivory tower.

We connect our students to the world they live in.

Very importantly, we strive to support our world-leading researchers in similar ways – a topic I’ll turn to now.

 

Imperial will find it difficult to retain its international ranking and, even more importantly,  to realize its full potential as a force for good in the world unless our researchers maintain strong networks with the global scientific community.

The problems we seek to solve are increasingly transnational in origin and require urgent, transnational solutions.

But, for Imperial, it is also, quite simply, a matter of scale.

Our international peer group enjoy significantly greater resources than we do at Imperial.

It is only by combining our research capabilities through closer collaboration with other European and international partners…

that we come close to the scale of the very big research institutions of the USA and China.

So, at Imperial we strive for greater research scale and impact through a multipronged approach to international partnerships.

First, we provide seed funding from departmental, faculty and institutional resources to support early collaborative opportunities.

This gives PhD students and early career researchers, in particular, the mobility and flexibility they need to build future partnerships.

Our forthcoming Campaign for Imperial will seek to boost this very important funding stream.

Second, at institutional level, we prioritize and support a limited number of deep bilateral partnerships with other great STEM research organizations

MIT in the US; TUM in Germany; CNRS in France; IISc in Bengaluru, University of Sao Paolo in Brazil, NTU in Singapore and the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

These partnerships seed-fund collaborative research that has a high likelihood of attracting major funding from national and international funders, philanthropists and corporations.

Last year, our seed fund with MIT supported the development of frontier technologies, such as safer and more efficient autonomous agents like driverless cars.

The Ayrton-Bleriot engineering lab, unveiled by President Macron, supports engineers at Imperial and CNRS using AI and emerging technologies to design models and materials that defy limitations: sensors for cancer, sustainable aviation fuel; green hydrogen, all at a scale that was previously unimaginable.

Which takes me to third pillar.

Imperial was a vocal advocate for the UK’s association with Horizon Europe – the world’s largest transnational research and innovation programme.

We very much welcome the government’s commitment to its successor, FP10.

And we are constantly scanning the horizon for new multi-institution and transnational network opportunities that offer the potential for even greater scale and impact.

But, as many of you will be aware, Imperial has taken the view that these measures are necessary, but not sufficient, if we are to realise our full potential as a force for good in the world.

That’s why we selected Singapore, San Francisco, Accra and Bengaluru as the locations for our first four Global Hubs.

These are regions where we already have a strong track record of collaboration and significant upside potential….

In a relatively short period of time, and with modest investment, these Global Hubs are already:

strengthening Imperial’s reputation globally;

fostering exciting new research and innovation outputs;

engaging our international alumni as never before;

And providing a bridge between innovation ecosystems with bidirectional flow of ideas, talent and capital.

In Bengaluru, our India Connect fund has supported projects on quantum modelling for climate adaptation in arid lands, in collaboration with IIT Bombay.

In Singapore, researchers are working on hydrogen carriers in ammonia cells to create a clean, efficient and sustainable fuel source to power electric cars.

And in Ghana, Luther Jesse Quarshie, who was one of our first Commonwealth Startup Fellows, has been using fly larvae to transform organic waste into animal feed and fertilizer.

 

Last year, Imperial Founders, our group of academics engaged in entrepreneurship, travelled to our hub in Singapore, for a major AI showcase.

There, they pitched their ideas to alumni, industry experts and investors….

Gaining access to new networks, capital and markets in a country which will invest over seven hundred million dollars into AI over the next five years.

Our Global Hubs offer new landing zones for the UK government and businesses seeking new market opportunities and partnerships abroad.

As an example, our Ghana hub played host to London Mayor Sadiq Khan last summer…

Giving him an opportunity to promote the UK as a destination for foreign direct investment – especially in frontier innovation.

As I stated in my address last year, Imperial is determined to play its full part in tackling the growth and productivity challenges facing the UK

Our international footprint and partnerships are a key part of that effort.

The exact same applies to Imperial’s role in the UK’s security and defence – the topic I’ll now pivot to as I come towards the end of my Address.

I sense from my conversations across our campuses that most colleagues appreciate that the real and growing threats to the UK are threats to all of us.

Now is not the time to retreat behind our walls,

Or to shirk our civic responsibility.

As I said at the outset, Imperial was founded ‘to be useful’

In 1907, ‘being useful’ referred, for the most part, to supporting industry.

Over time, it encompassed broader aims – being useful to the economy and wider society.

In 2026, given the troubled times we live in, there is an expectation that it will encompass security and defence.

The threats we face today - from drones to hypersonics to cyber-attacks - are based on cutting-edge science.

Our defences against such threats have to be just as cutting-edge.

Universities already hold so much of the requisite expertise in AI, materials, computer science, natural sciences and engineering…

Much of that expertise is here at Imperial.

At Imperial, we are both principled and pragmatic about security and defence-related research.

We fully understand that so much cutting-edge science and technology is potentially “dual use” and the responsibility that goes with that.

Our pioneering work in engineering biology, for example, has the potential to produce new therapeutics, new sustainable fabrics and new protein sources to feed the world’s growing population.

The same technology, in the wrong hands, could be deployed for more sinister purposes.

So we have robust systems in place and under constant review to ensure this does not happen.

But dual use presents opportunities as well as risks.

Many of the techniques applied to the study of antimicrobial resistance, for instance, are equally applicable to the UK’s biosecurity efforts.

Naturally, at a time when science and technology have never been more important to the UK’s security and defence, Imperial, as one of the world’s leading STEM universities, is expected to play its full part.

I know this from conversations with the government, with industry leaders, and with staff, students and alumni who are concerned for the future.

I want to state clearly now that we understand this expectation and we will fulfil it responsibly and with determination.

We are proud to already collaborate with companies and government agencies - from Rolls Royce to the National Cyber Security Centre - which play key roles in the UK’s defence and security efforts.

And we are proud that so many of our academic leaders have served the government as Chief Scientific Advisors, contributing to the security of the UK and the world.

Many of the trusted partnerships we have built at home and abroad, with collaborators who share our values, will be as important when it comes to security and defence research as they have been to research on climate change, pandemics, and food security.

If we work together, with shared resources, shared expertise, and shared responsibility, we will be more than a match for the grave challenges ahead.

I look forward to engaging with our academic leadership and wider community over the coming months to discuss Imperial’s positioning in this important area – how we approach it, our principles, policies, spectrum of activities and facilities, our ambition and guardrails.

 

Let me end on an optimistic note.

I began by quoting H. G. Wells.

Today, Wells is mainly remembered for his dystopias, like War of the Worlds and the Time Machine…

But, he was, in fact, tremendously optimistic about the future.

Reflecting on the devastations of war, he said:

The “dangers” and “disasters” of the twentieth century were “enormous”, because “science has brought [us] such powers as [we have] never had before.”

But these same “powers” were their solution: they would mend all the damage.

We are “hardly in the earliest dawn of human greatness.”

This optimism is what defines Imperial: our belief in the power of science to create a better future for humanity.

It is the quality I see every day in our students and staff at Imperial.

People come to Imperial because they want to make a difference ….

Because they want to harness the power of science and technology to make the world a better place.

Imperial is a global meeting place for everyone who believes in the power of science to discover, to create, to explain and to transform…

To understand more of the universe and improve the lives of more people in it.

Imperial is a bastion of, and advocate for international collaboration in a world marred by division.

We have partners and projects in 192 out of the 193 countries that make up the UN.

We believe in science for humanity. For all of humanity.

Yes, the tide of isolationism is strong.

But by working with like-minded trusted partners, we can turn it.

And we will.

Thank you.

 

Professor Hugh Brady

President, Imperial College London

 

^[1] H.G.Wells, “What I believe”, originally published in The Listener magazine 1931, reprinted in I Believe (1940), https://archive.org/details/ibelieve0000fadi/page/366/mode/2up?q=wells