Our goal: The Imperial Class of 2030 will be the most talented, the most enterprising and the most diverse we have ever had the privilege to serve.

Now: We are proud to host talented, high-performing and ambitious students from across the globe, often from backgrounds where the path to academic excellence has not been straightforward. Our teaching is founded in strong, core disciplines and is research-rich and intellectually stretching. Our taught Master's programmes delivers specialist education at the leading edge of STEMB. And we encourage all students to broaden their educational experience by exploring other interests such as modern languages, art and music.

Imperial has a strong track record of digital innovation – including our swift transition to online learning at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. And because our work doesn’t finish when students graduate, we ensure employability and the advanced skills they need for a tech-enabled future are embedded across our curricula. Because of these qualities and many more, Imperial is proud to have recently been awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize, the Times and Sunday Times University of the Year and a Gold Award in the national Teaching Excellence Framework.

Next: The Imperial Class of 2030 will be educated in a welcoming, supportive and appropriately challenging environment where disciplinary excellence, interdisciplinary working and entrepreneurship training are seamlessly integrated and supported by state-of-the-art digital and physical infrastructure and an engaging extracurricular experience.

Students will be able explore opportunities for greater interdisciplinarity through further development of Imperial’s I-Explore Programme and through new advanced skills and leadership modules offered by the Imperial Institute of Extended Learning. We will expand the Imperial Enterprise Lab to meet increasing student demand, and the launch of Imperial’s four Schools of Convergence Science will boost our portfolio of taught Master’s programmes.

We will transform Imperial’s digital education infrastructure, including our Digital Media Lab and Virtual Learning Environment, and build on new initiatives such as ViRSE to incorporate virtual reality and other digital technologies into our teaching.

We will make major investments in our physical infrastructure, including the development of the Sherfield Student Hub, upgrades at our Silwood Park eco-campus and our London NHS clinical campuses.

We will deliver the next phase of our White City Deep Tech Campus, including a major new interdisciplinary centre co-locating mathematical, data and computer sciences, AI and machine learning, and business education, with new state-of-the-art research facilities for convergence science and co-created industry research and partnerships.

We will review and further invest in our student residential, sports and recreation portfolio, and roll out our new whole-institution Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Together, these plans will ensure that the Imperial Class of 2030 has the freedom to imagine, the encouragement to challenge and an environment to flourish in.

“Every year, our talented and highly-skilled graduates move around the world into careers in and beyond STEMB - this is the principal means by which Imperial makes its global impact." - Professor Peter Haynes, Vice-Provost (Education and Student Experience)

Opportunities for student entrepreneurs

Our Enterprise Lab supports more than 2,000 students each year with mentoring, access to experts in residence, development workshops and more. The goal is to develop their entrepreneurial mindset, skills and networks, help them test new ideas and launch products, services and ventures that address real-world problems.

The Venture Catalyst Challenge is our most prestigious entrepreneurship prize, each year supporting 25 student and postdoc ventures under five themes: Health and Wellbeing, Energy and Environment, Creative and Consumer, AI and Robotics, and Digital and Finance. The programme sees student teams pitch their ideas to a panel of industry leaders for a chance to win a share of the £100,000 prize fund – the biggest such fund of any UK-based university entrepreneurship competition. Previous participants have gone on to gain global recognition and raise significant funding, including the founders of Notpla who won the Earthshot prize for their seaweed-based biodegradable alternative to plastic. Notpla was co-founded by Imperial students who met while studying Innovation Design Engineering, a joint course by Imperial and the Royal College of Art.

The WE Innovate programme recognises up to 25 outstanding women-led startups from Imperial every year. It is the first university programme of its type in the UK. The programme has an annual prize fund, with many teams going on to raise significant venture funding post-competition, including Matrix, the startup developing a self-use cervical screening tool and diagnosis device supported by AI.