The Creating Knowledge update from the April 2017 Leadership Bulletin
Creating knowledge – Professor Paul Harrison
We ‘transform lives’ of individuals by giving them the opportunity to study with us, by supporting them, developing them through an education programme and preparing them for a career after graduation. We also ‘transform the lives’ of many people through our applied research and the impact it makes on their lives. Research is what makes us a university and the co-creation of knowledge and its exchange with our industrial, commercial and public sector partners generates that vibrant intellectual buzz that you can feel as you walk through healthcare, sport, engineering, art & design, education, policy studies and our business school. It’s right, therefore, that ‘creating knowledge’ is at the heart of our new strategy.
It is a distinct and bold vision that we will continue to transform the lives of people in our region, the nation and across the globe. There is about to be a step-change in our research and innovation which will be most apparent through our commitment to develop our funded and planned Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) and our National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering, into a wider Health Innovation Campus. This will aid in the regeneration of a former industrial site and be our contribution to Sheffield’s wider innovation district. We are already exploring ideas and potential funding routes for a third centre to complement and build upon the strengths of the first two.
The Creating Knowledge Board will also be looking at how we will identify areas where targeted investment could lead to rapid growth in research capacity by attracting external income, through new opportunities such as the Global Challenges Research Fund and the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. There is rapid change in the external environment and we will have to be agile to make the most of the opportunities, but I believe that fundamentally we have the research base by which we can collaborate – or, if necessary, compete – with the best.
