WHO WE ARE
Our Ethos & History
ChRS has a multidisciplinary team of scientists, clinicians, and researchers based at the University of Birmingham.
Established in 2006, we act as the collaborative research partner of clinical fertility services, working closely with the Birmingham Women’s Fertility Centre at Birmingham Women’s Hospital and University of Birmingham’s Medical School.
Our research interests unite to discover incisive answers in our field. This encompasses creating internationally-leading understanding of the sperm tail through to improving the support and information to individuals, couples, offspring and donors.
Our role is to study how human reproduction works and improve fertility treatments, rather than directly treating patients.
WE FOCUS ON:
- Understanding male factor infertility
- Guiding how male fertility is assessed for contraception
- Investigating causes of infertility and miscarriage, and the role of sperm
- Developing new diagnostic tools and IVF techniques
- Running clinical trials to improve success rates of fertility treatments (e.g.HABSelect and UNiTY)
- Bridging lab research with real-world care (“translational medicine”)
- Engaging with patients and the public to create resources which improve public education on fertility, particularly non-English speaking communities
We are licensed to conduct research involving human reproductive material (including sperm and eggs) under strict ethical regulation.
Our motto is “Future Generations” as a big part of what we do aims to ensure the health of not just our children but understanding the impact on their children too – enabling and protecting the health of our future generations.
What is Online DNA testing?
We are passionate about making fertility and reproductive education accessible and freely available to the public. Everyone deserves to understand their body, their rights and any potential treatment processes they may go through, not only so they know what to expect but also so they can give fully informed consent. We are committed to ensuring educational resources are available in multiple languages, with a focus on visual and audible content so that written language is not a barrier.
History of fertility at the University of Birmingham
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Dr. Dame Hilda Lloyd
Dr. Dame Hilda Lloyd
Dame Hilda studied at UoB and became the first female professor (1944) as well as first female president of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (1946) and the first female elected to the Geneal Medicine Council (1950).
She is renowned for her work on tackling the impact of poverty of pregnant women, STIs, illegal abortions, and pioneering “flying squads” to help save the lives of mothers and babies across Birmingham.
Baron Solly Zuckerman
Baron Solly Zuckerman
Professor of Anatomy 1945-1968 at UoB. Published the paper in 1951 describing
the arguments for and against postnatal
oogenesis. In simple terms he set the accepted dogma that ‘women are born with all the eggs they will ever have’
[Zuckerman, S., 1951. The number of oocytes in the mature ovary. Recent Progress in Hormone Research, 6, pp.63-109.]
Professor Jack Cohen
Professor Jack Cohen
Professor at UoB from 1959 – 1987. Wrote textbooks such as Living Embryos (1967) , Reproduction (1977), and who in 1967 published his initial theories on sperm redundancy https://rdcu.be/femWr [Cohen, J. Cross-overs, sperm redundancy and their close association. Heredity 31, 408–413 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1973.96 ]
. Jack’s elegant experiments in 1973-74 that demonstrated only a few sperm of millions can make it through the rabbit reproductive tract, but those can do it repeatedly still form key background to work internationally today[JKB(aSS1] [MG(aSS2] . [Citation: Cohen, J. (1983). Selection Among Spermatozoa. In: André, J. (eds) The Sperm Cell. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7675-7_6 ]
Dr. Richard Palmer
Dr. Richard Palmer
Richard completed his PhD at UoB 1962 – 1963 and work served as the foundation for IVF treatment, revolutionising reproductive medicine worldwide, enabling thousands of healthy births through IVF and other assisted reproductive methods. His groundbreaking research on ovarian function in the 1960s underpins present-day fertility treatments designed to induce ovulation
Professor John Blake
Professor John Blake
Professor of Applied Mathematics at UoB 1989 – 2013. Used mathematical models and fluid
dynamics to study sperm motility. John was instrumental in launching our truly collaborative integrated maths and sperm biology team in the Centre. He contributed to lots of maths beyond our field, but for our team he is much missed since his premature passing and the groundwork thinking he set down make him still feel a key part of our team.
Read Prof Dave Smiths tribute to John Blake and his contributions to biological fluid mechanics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.02606
Dr. Lars Björndahl
Dr. Lars Björndahl
Associate Professor in Andrology. Specialised in standardization, training and quality control concerning human ejaculate examination since 1994.[JKB(aSS1] Lars joined the University of Birmingham from 2001 – 2005 working with Prof Chris Barratt.
Chris Barratt
Chris Barratt
Chris completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham Zoology department with Jack Cohen in 1985, just as the first the IVF clinic in the Women’s hospital was being set up. From 1997-2005 Chris was the Scientific Director of the ART Centre at the Birmingham Women’s Hospital. His research focusses primarily on understanding the function of human spermatozoa and identifying the key factors in the process of sperm-egg interaction in humans
Prof. Jackson Kirkman-Brown MBE
Prof. Jackson Kirkman-Brown MBE
Current Director of the Centre for Human Reproductive Sciences (ChRS) and Professor of Human Reproductive Science at UoB. He completed his PhD in sperm research at UoB in 2000, becoming Science lead of the Fertility Centre at Birmingham’s Women’s Hospital (BWH) in 2005, Director of ChRS in 2007, and HFEA person responsible at BWH Fertility Centre in 2019. Jackson is internationally recognised for his work in fertility, campaigning for international donor limits, and since 2015 has worked with the military on fertility preservation after gential injury, earning him an MBE.
Dr. Meurig Gallagher
Dr. Meurig Gallagher
Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Healthcare at UoB and Deputy-Director of ChRS. His work integrates mathematical modelling and software with experimental methods to create new diagnostics and treatments for infertility. He is the University of Birmingham’s Person Responsible for their HFEA Research Licence (YEAR) and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2025. He developed the package FAST (Flagellar Analysis and Sperm Tracking), a tool that enables rapid, affordable analysis of the moving flagellum of the sperm.