Life sciences clusters: where are the best academic research locations for biological sciences?
As emerging life science clusters continue to grow in the UK, we analyse what universities lead the way in biological sciences research.
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.
The University of Manchester saw the highest jump in its ranking for biological sciences.
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.
What are the results for biological sciences?
The second focus, in a series of articles, looks at biological sciences – the study of life and living organisms.
| 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). |
| Institute of Cancer Research |
3.77 |
| University of Dundee |
3.7 |
| University of Cambridge |
3.37 |
| University of Sheffield |
3.4 |
| University of Oxford |
3.4 |
| University of Manchester |
3.12 |
| University of Edinburgh |
3.44 |
| University of Bristol |
3.15 |
| University of York |
3.37 |
| Imperial College London |
3.41 |
| Institution |
Research Power (multiplies the institution’s GPA by the proportion of staff submitting) Indexed. |
| University of Oxford |
1000 |
| University of Cambridge |
808 |
| UCL |
531 |
| University of Manchester |
463 |
| University of Edinburgh |
446 |
| University of Exeter |
298 |
| Imperial College London |
291 |
| Cardiff University |
285 |
| University of Nottingham |
277 |
| University of Sheffield |
255 |
Universities with the largest change in GPA rankings 2014-2021
- University of Manchester
- University of Glasgow
- University of Southampton
Universities with the largest change in research power rankings 2014-2021
- University of Exeter
- Queen Mary University of London
- University of Sheffield
- University of Essex
The next article in the series will look at rankings for computer science and informatics.
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