Through its graduate and undergraduate programs offered at the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) offers high-quality training in higher education.
The Faculty of Health and Life Sciences began with an innovative training project that focused on creating an undergraduate biomedical program, Human Biology, in 1998. The program’s most notable aspects were small-group instruction, problem-based learning, a focus on developing practical skills, and one-on-one student mentoring. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) guidelines were followed from the beginning of this project, and it has been recognised with multiple awards from the Government of Catalonia (the Vicens Vives medal was awarded four times, in 2002, 2005, 2007, and 2013).
Later, MELIS and the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences started an undergraduate degree in Bioengineering, in collaboration with the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies. More recently, jointly with the Hospital del Mar, we launched an undergraduate degree in Medicine. Over the years, we have also developed graduate masters’ programs and a PhD Program in Biomedicine.
According to the U-Multirank, the UE ranking, in 2022 UPF was the 1st university in Spain and the 4th in Europe. UPF is also the 1st university in Spain in the U-Ranking 2023 (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 3rd 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, our 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 they’re consistently among the top 5 Spanish universities. Moreover, in the last two years, according to a survey by the BBVA Foundation, UPF is the best university in Spain for obtaining a medicine degree.
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.
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.
Master in Clinical Analysis Laboratory
The 2023-2024 course was the last edition of this master.
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, 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.
