Research Impact and Excellence
For decades, our research has had a significant impact on academic research, the computing industry and wider society.
The real-world impact of our research
Excellent research can have a positive impact beyond academia. It influences organisations, policymakers, communities and individuals who can use research to:
- improve public policy and services
- improve health and wellbeing
- improve quality of life
- drive the economy
- help the environment
Seeing the real-world impact of research has become more and more important to funders. Since 2007, UK research councils require researchers to describe:
- the potential impact of their research
- how they’ll increase its success and adoption
Current research
Our current research and developing areas of impact include:
- data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms
- cloud computing, edge computing and Internet of Things (IoT)
- formal methods and model-based software engineering
- human-centric computing and software design
- games and mobile application design
- bio-computing (synthetic biology, machine learning, neuroinformatics)
- cyber security, cyber resilience and cryptography
- Educational Practice in Computing (EPiC)
Research Excellence Framework (REF)
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is how the UK assesses the quality of research from UK higher education providers. This also includes the real-world impact the research has had.
REF 2021
In REF2021 Research England increased Impact to be worth a total of 25% of the assessment.
We presented the following case studies:
- Expansion of the middleware software market
- Efficient power management in consumer electronics
- Railway safety
- Provenance and enabling trust in information
REF 2014
The School of Computing received a fantastic result in the REF 2014 exercise. We jumped from 22nd to 9th place in the UK by GPA. This placed us in the top quartile for computer science.
All of our impact case studies were judged to be world-leading.
Impact was introduced to REF 2014, and was worth 20% of the assessment.
We were ranked as the best research unit in the UK for impact, for our Computer Science and Informatics (UoA 11) submission. All our computer science impact case studies received the highest possible grade.
We presented the following case studies:
- Expansion of the middleware software market
- Improved processes for the development of dependable systems
- Novel computational approaches to discover medicines
- Worldwide adoption of asynchronous circuits and improved business process modelling