The University of Liverpool is a public research university based in the city of Liverpool, England. Founded as a college in 1881, it gained its Royal Charter in 1903 with the ability to award degrees and is also known to be one of the six ‘red brick’ civic universities, the first to be referred to as The Original Red Brick. It comprises three faculties organised into 35 departments and schools. It is a founding member of the Russell Group, the N8 Group for research collaboration and the university management school is triple crown accredited. Nine Nobel Prize winners are amongst its alumni and past faculty and the university offers more than 230 first degree courses across 103 subjects.[7] Its alumni include the CEOs of GlobalFoundries, ARM Holdings, Tesco, Motorola and The Coca-Cola Company. It was the world’s first university to establish departments in oceanography, civic design, architecture, and biochemistry at the Johnston Laboratories.[2] In 2006 the university became the first in the UK to establish an independent university in China, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, making it the world’s first Sino-British university. The university is ranked in the top 1% of universities worldwide according to Academic ranking of world universities and has previously been ranked within the top 150 university globally by the guide.[31] It is also a founding member of the Russell Group and a founding member of the Northern Consortium. The university is a research-based university with 33,000 students pursuing over 450 programmes spanning 54 subject areas. It has a broad range of teaching and research in both arts and sciences, and the University of Liverpool School of Medicine established in 1835 is today one of the largest medical schools in the UK.