Life sciences clusters: computer science and informatics academic research locations ranked
As emerging life science clusters continue to grow in the UK, we analyse what universities lead the way in computer science and informatics.
2 minutes to read
It is well documented that an essential element of a thriving life sciences cluster is proximity to academia. But how do real estate investors, developers and occupiers obtain an understanding of which of the UK’s more than 150 universities have the life sciences research strengths necessary to underpin their investment and location decisions? The Research Excellence Framework (REF) provides data that helps to answer this question.
The latest results from the REF detail the research strengths of the universities located in the Golden Triangle but they also provide useful insight for those looking towards accelerating or emergent clusters.
What is The Research Excellence Framework?
• An assessment of 185,594 research outputs from 157 participating UK universities. The assessment is undertaken by 34 expert sub-panels under the guidance of four main panels made up of 900 academic members and 220 research users.
• It is designed to quantify the impact and quality of university research.
• Outputs are assessed against the quality of the research outputs (60% of score) as well as impact (25% of score) and the research environment (e.g. resources, environment, infrastructure)(15% of score).
• Crucially, the four UK higher education funding bodies use the findings to inform the allocation of circa £2bn in public funding invested in research annually.
• In addition to research outputs, universities also submit the number of staff with significant responsibility for research.
Best performing academic research locations for computer science and informatics
The third and final focus, in a series of articles, looks at computer science and informatics.
A recent sentiment survey conducted by Advanced Oxford found that computational/data skills were high on the list of skills requirements of life science companies in five years’ time.
| Institution |
GPA (Overall grade for the three areas of quality of outputs, impact and environment. It does not take into account the number of staff submitting). |
| Imperial College London |
3.93 |
| University of Oxford |
3.81 |
| University of Birmingham |
3.77 |
| UCL |
3.75 |
| University of Warwick |
3.75 |
| University of Edinburgh |
3.73 |
| University of Bristol |
3.68 |
| Queen Mary University of London |
3.65 |
| University of York |
3.62 |
| University of Leeds |
3.62 |
| Institution |
Research Power (multiplies the institution’s GPA by the proportion of staff submitting.) Indexed |
| University of Edinburgh |
1000 |
| UCL |
699 |
| University of Cambridge |
540 |
| University of Oxford |
522 |
| Queen Mary University of London |
467 |
| University of Essex |
451 |
| Imperial college London |
428 |
| University of Bristol |
405 |
| Ulster University |
404 |
| University of Sheffield |
379 |
Universities with the largest change in GPA rankings 2014-2021
- University of Lincoln
- Loughborough University
- Nottingham Trent University
Universities with the largest change in research power rankings 2014-2021
- Northumbria University
- Liverpool John Moores University
- Edinburgh Napier University