Life sciences clusters: where are the best academic research locations?
As emerging life science clusters continue to grow in the UK, we analyse what universities lead the way in their respective fields.
3 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 answering 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.
For example, The University of Leicester was ranked third nationally for clinical medicine, as well as seeing the greatest leap in its ranking from 2014. Meanwhile The University of Manchester saw the highest jump in its ranking for biological sciences. Finally, The University of Dundee was also highly ranked for biological sciences, in addition to being sixth nationally in terms of the total value of spin-outs created over the last 20 years.
Below is a summary of the findings and methodology:
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 4 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.
What are the results for clinical medicine?
The first focus in a series of articles looks at clinical medicine – a field of medicine that deals primarily with the practice and study of medicine based on the direct examination of the patient.
Here we look at the overall grade for the three areas of quality of outputs, impact and environment. It does not take into account the number of staff submitting.
| 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) The top score available is 4. |
| University of Cambridge |
3.63 |
| UCL |
3.57 |
| University of Leicester |
3.57 |
| University of Glasgow |
3.56 |
| Imperial College London |
3.54 |
| University of Oxford |
3.52 |
| Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine |
3.52 |
| King’s College London |
3.49 |
| Institute of Cancer Research |
3.49 |
| University of Edinburgh |
3.48 |
| Institution |
Research Power (multiplies the institution’s GPA by the proportion of staff submitting.) Results are indexed |
| University of Oxford |
1000 |
| Imperial College London |
886 |
| University of Cambridge |
753 |
| University of Edinburgh |
709 |
| UCL |
701 |
| University of Birmingham |
433 |
| Queen Mary University of London |
428 |
| University of Manchester |
427 |
| King’s College London |
362 |
| University of Liverpool |
349 |
Universities with the largest change in GPA rankings 2014-2021
- University of Leicester
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
- University of Birmingham
Universities with the largest change in research power rankings 2014-2021
- University of Exeter
- University of Aberdeen
- St George’s, University of London
Don't miss the next article in this series that looks at how institutions rank for biological sciences.