[16] UFMG also has campi at Tiradentes and Montes Claros, though most courses are taught at the main campus in the Pampulha district of Belo Horizonte.

[21][22][23][24] The origins of the university go back to the 19th century, when it first appeared in the Republic as a continuation of a process that began during the Empire, with the opening of the first institutions of higher education.

In 1927, these four schools merged to found University of Minas Gerais (UMG), a private institution subsidized by the state government.

Additional courses have been established, among them agronomy, archival science, theater, museology, control engineering, computational mathematics, and speech therapy/audiology.

It is research-oriented, even at the undergraduate level, whose students are encouraged to take part in research development through the Scientific Initiation program.

[27] It encompasses 860 research groups, 1051 patent deposits in Brazil and abroad, and has the highest score (5 out of 5) at the Ministry of Education's undergraduate assessment.

The campus avails of 38 built facilities, hundreds of scientific research laboratories and a 250 kW TRIGA nuclear reactor from General Atomics.

There is also an extensive area of secondary forest known as the Estação Ecológica ("Ecological Station"), where some university scientists – mainly ecologists and zoologists – carry out research; this is the largest green space within the city boundaries, and is home to endemic insect species.

It comprises the departments of Instruments & Voice (INC Instrumentos e Canto) and Music Theory (TGM Teoria Geral da Música).

The School of Physical Education, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais is an institution located within the Pampulha campus of the university.

It currently holds a prominent position on the national scene for its undergraduate courses and Graduate Studies, and its research and extension projects.

The School of Engineering hosts 13 faculty departments (Structures, Materials and Construction, Mining, Industrial Production, Transportation and Geotechnical, Electrical, Electronic, Hydric Resources and Hydraulic, Mechanical, Metallurgical, Nuclear, Chemical, and Sanitary and Environmental Engineering departments), 11 undergraduate engineer degree-awarding courses, and 10 post-graduate master's and doctorate title-awarding programs, held in a 13 pavilions (among classroom buildings, research buildings, libraries, and one-lab buildings for nuclear and fuel-combustion research) facilities complex.

Its facilities encompass several pavilions of buildings and a many-wings Veterinary Medicine Hospital that receives all types of animals for treatments from zoos and institutions of many different parts of Brazil.

The Department of Anthropology is one of the first in Brazil and hosts an undergraduate course of its own and a post-graduate program of its own, producing research in the avant-garde of the field in the world.

The Faculty of Law and State Sciences is located on a campus of its own at the center of Belo Horizonte downtown, a two-tower, 16-floor facility of prize-winning architecture, at the corner of Guajajaras street with Álvares Cabral Avenue.

Between 1892 – year of its foundation – and 1927 the Law School was an autonomous institution and congregated several important lawyers and politicians in national context.

Six graduate programs and around 300 topics of research occupy 290 teachers at the Institute of Biological Sciences (ICB), 90% of whom holding doctoral, master's or post-baccalaureate degrees.

The laboratories of the institute's ten departments conduct research in Biology, some of them being national standards, such as the Center of Electronic Microscopy.

ICB has developed a simple non-radioactive methodology for the study of DNA impressions and the American visceral leishmaniasis vaccine.

Among the ICB topics of research responsible for the largest number of publications are those related to the development of new vaccines and medications – Biochemistry, Immunology, and Microbiology – to Genetics and to Ecology.

Most research work done in Engineering is related to technological development, with application in industry, funded by national and international agencies.

By means of agreements and service contracts signed through the Christiano Otonni Foundation, the school makes contact with companies from the public and private sectors.

The Department of Psychology is the largest of the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences, and holds the position of one of the best in Brazil due to undergraduate teaching outputs.

The Center for Mathematics and Science Teaching in Minas Gerais (Cecimig) studies the learning processes in the area and offers permanent courses for primary and secondary teachers.

The UFMG Faculty of Medicine is one of the founding academic units and receives massive investments from the Union's (Federal Government) Executive Power Ministry of Health, leading to an important research output in the Brazilian scientific scenario.

The UFMG School of Medicine's twelve departments research more than 100 topics, using the infrastructure of the Hospital das Clínicas and its 14 labs.

Among the topics are infectious and parasitic diseases, hematology and oncology, gastroenterology and digestive tract surgery, ophthalmology, and endocrinology.

Some of their research topics are education and the nursing curriculum, transmitted diseases, work force, workers' health quality, and rites of death in senior citizens' memories.

At the two departments linked to the Physical Education program, nearly half the 35 teachers do research, most of which is done in the Labs of Exercise Physiology and of Sport Psychology.

Past students include former Brazilian presidents Dilma Rousseff, Juscelino Kubitschek and Tancredo Neves; former governor of Minas Gerais Rondon Pacheco;[62] writer, medical doctor and diplomat João Guimarães Rosa; writers Fernando Sabino, Pedro Nava and Cyro dos Anjos; plastic surgeon Ivo Pitanguy; poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade and musicians Fernando Brant, Samuel Rosa of Skank and Fernanda Takai of Pato Fu; electrical engineer and mathematician Welington de Melo; architect Fernando Maculan.