Our Research Impact

“Mighty oaks from little acorns grow”

In innovation and research, one quote sticks out … “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow”. And so, it is one little seed that you plant in the ground, that eventually becomes the world-leading company, or the great scientific breakthrough. It was the seed of the BBC Micro that created ARM, and the seed of DOS that created Microsoft. Google, Facebook, and many other world-leading companies, have all started from little seeds.

Increasingly, too, these seeds are based on IP (Intellectual Property), and one of the best ways to generate IP is with research investment. And, with the right seeds, you will see your tree grow and become a mighty oak. Many seeds, though, will never come to anything, but, if you pick the right ones, and give them the nurishment, and have people to feed them, they will grow in a way that you could never imagine.

And so, after a long process, the REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2021 results have been released. For Computer Science and Informatics, my university and School of Computing submitted 39.4 FTE staff (around three-quarters of the academic staff who were eligible). This has grown around four times since the last REF submission — and we made the submission as inclusive as possible. The scoring for overall, outputs, impact and environment were:

What’s great to see is that three-quarters of the overall outputs submitted were 3*(international-class) or 4* (world-class). In case you don’t know the ranking, here it is:

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