University College London (UCL) was established in 1826 to open up education in England for the first time to students of any race or religion, becoming the first university in London. UCL has its main campus in the Bloomsbury area of central London, with a number of institutes and teaching hospitals elsewhere in central London and satellite campuses in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London and in Doha, Qatar. UCL is organised into 11 constituent faculties, within which there are over 100 departments, institutes and research centres.

Famous alumni include Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone) and Francis Harry Compton Crick who helped identify the DNA double helix. In 2010 UCL becomes a founding partner of the Francis Crick Institute, a medical research consortium also involving the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, Imperial and King's College London.