The Creating Knowledge update from the October 2017 Leadership Bulletin

Creating Knowledge – Professor Roger Eccleston

The research and innovation objectives in our strategy are clear, ambitious and challenging.  If we are to be the ‘leading applied university’ our research will need to be genuinely world class in key areas, our performance in terms of research income and research power and other metrics will need to be leading amongst our competitors and we will need to be able to demonstrate that our research and innovation activities have social, economic and cultural impact and enriches the experience of our students.

We have a good base from which to develop: we have examples of research and innovation excellence across the University and a good performance in the last Research Excellence Framework (REF) to build on.  We have also demonstrated our ability to link disciplines to create innovative research programmes and deliver impact.

External factors, including changes to the funding landscape and Brexit, undoubtedly provide challenges but there are also significant opportunities including new funding streams associated with the Government’s industrial strategy that we are well-placed to access.  The Health Innovation Campus provides us with a very exciting opportunity to enhance the regional profile to some of our research and innovation strengths and develop vehicles for maximising their impact.

The work of the Creating Knowledge Pillar Board will focus on developing and implementing a Creating Knowledge Implementation Plan which will deliver the strategy’s objectives relating to research and innovation.  Priorities for the next quarter will include identifying those application areas in which we are, or can be, outstanding and developing actions to raise our research performance in those areas and more broadly across the University.