The Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) provides high-quality higher education training through graduate and undergraduate programmes taught at the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences.
The Faculty of Health and Life Sciences was established on the premises of an innovative training project focused on developing an undergraduate programme in biomedicine.
The degree in Human Biology began in 1998 with a distinct teaching methodology. Small groups of students, use of problem-based learning, emphasis on acquiring practical skills and individual student mentorship.
This project aligned from its inception with the recommendations from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and has been recognized with several awards: the Vicens Vives Prize awarded four times in 2002, 2005, 2007 and 2013, by the Government of Catalonia, as well as the Prize to the Teaching Innovation in 2006, awarded by the Spanish Government.
Later, MELIS and the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences started an undergraduate degree in Bioengineering, jointly with the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies, and more recently an undergraduate degree in Medicine, together with the Hospital del Mar. Throughout these years, MELIS has also developed graduate master’s programmes and a Ph.D. Programme in Biomedicine.
A reference both at the national and international level, according to the U-Multirank 2022 (funded and implemented by the European Commission), the UPF is the 1st university in Spain and the 4th in Europe, and also the 1st university in Spain in the U-Ranking 2022 (Fundación BBVA-Ivie, which integrates indicators in teaching, research, and technological innovation). Furthermore, in the Times Higher Education ranking (2023) it is the 18th highest-ranked university in the world among those under 50 years of age; and the 1st Spanish university. Regarding the Leiden 2022 ranking by subject, UPF is the 1st university in Spain for life and earth sciences and the 2nd for biomedical and health sciences.
Finally, MELIS’ medicine students have obtained excellent resident positions at the national contest (around 80% of them are consistently ranked in the 1st and 2nd quartiles), which means always being placed among the top 5 Spanish universities. Moreover, in the last two years, our centre has been considered the best university in Spain for obtaining a Medicine degree, according to the BBVA foundation survey.
Bachelor Degrees
Master’s programmes
Biomedical Research
The Master’s degree in Biomedical Research focuses on the study of the molecular, cellular, physiological and evolutionary bases of biological processes and their pathological or adaptive alterations, and is mainly aimed at students who wish to obtain a PhD in different fields of Biomedicine.
Clinical Analysis Laboratory
This master’s programme focuses on the application of laboratory techniques for clinical diagnosis and presymptomatic and predisposition testing. Students will study aspects related to clinical and environmental microbiology, biochemistry, immunology, clinical and multifactorial genetics, molecular genetics applied to forensic diagnostics, and genetic counselling and assisted reproduction techniques, and to the clinical assessment and interpretation of results obtained with laboratory techniques.
Public Health
The primary objective of the master’s programme in Public Health is to enable students to understand health and disease processes and their determinants from the point of view of the population and to address health issues by means of collective interventions to promote, protect and restore health.
Master of Multidisciplinary Research in Experimental Sciences- MRES (coordinated with the BIST)
The programme offers highly flexible and personalized hands-on research training in a multidisciplinary research environment. In addition to the research aspect, the master’s will also develop talented scientists through experiential training in professional skills such as scientific communication, project management, responsible research and innovation.
PhD in Biomedicine
The PhD Programme in Biomedicine forms part of the UPF Doctoral School and provides graduate students with a training framework to develop a research project and complete a doctoral thesis in the fields of health and life sciences that allows them to become scientists. More than 400 doctoral students are currently enrolled in the programme, most of them conducting their research in public institutions within the PRBB. The UPF’s PhD programme in Biomedicine follows the latest regulations for doctoral studies in Spain, the so-called Royal Decree (RD) 99/2011, which were introduced to obey the guidelines and recommendations of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) on doctoral studies. All its training activities are carried out in English and every year the programme attracts a large number of students from abroad. These activities aim at preparing students to become independent researchers seeking a scientific career. Successful candidates will have access to a wide range of academic activities, and ad hoc training in scientific skills, and access to the PRBB Intervals programme, an interdisciplinary education programme for professionals working in the PRBB. The awarded PhD degree complies with the requirements of the Spanish National Agency for the Evaluation, Quality and Accreditation (ANECA) and in February 2019, the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency, AQU Catalunya, awarded the programme the maximum qualification of Excellence Accreditation label.
