UCL GRAND CHALLENGES

The radical vision of our founders two centuries ago continues to inform our research. They understood education and universities to be the key to reforming the world. They unshackled scholarship and enquiry, refusing to let religious restrictions and academic convention inhibit progress.

From its earliest days, UCL challenged the prevailing limitations on the scope of academic endeavour, engaging in teaching and research in new areas as required by the emerging industrial and commercial society. It pioneered research and teaching in, for example, law, architecture, medicine, geography, physics, chemistry, engineering and modern languages.

For almost two centuries, our staff and students have undertaken research that has helped shape the modern world. Their achievements include:

• advances in communications such as the invention of the thermionic valve, making modern electronics possible, the development of the telephone and wireless telegraphy, and the establishment of the first transatlantic computer network connection, the precursor of the internet
• biomedical breakthroughs such as the identification of hormones and vitamins, the first antiseptic treatment of wounds, and understanding of the physiology of nerve cells and their synaptic connections
• understanding of the immune system’s rejection of tissue and organ grafts, and of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis
• discovery of the inert gases, including neon, which resulted in the first of 20 Nobel Prizes so far earned by our staff and students.

Today, UCL remains committed to developing and disseminating original knowledge to benefit the world of the future.

Medicine, architecture, laws, economics, computer science and philosophy are among the academic disciplines at UCL to have achieved outstanding results in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008, with UCL’s total number of full-time equivalent staff rated of world-leading quality third overall in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge.

The RAE assesses the research strength of UK universities, and informs the distribution of public funds to the sector by the nation’s higher education funding bodies. UCL submitted more than 1,800 staff in 49 of the 67 Units of Assessment. In the vast majority of UCL’s submissions, at least 50% of the staff submitted were ranked at either the highest grade of 4* (‘of world-leading quality’), or 3* (‘internationally excellent’).

Recent independent analysis of the Thomson Scientific Citation Index system – which catalogues journal articles and citations in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities – showed the extent to which our activity is informing the agenda for research worldwide. It demonstrated that UCL is the second most productive and the third most highly cited European university, and the UK university most-cited by health researchers. In neuroscience we have a historic and contemporary international reputation that is second to none.

We have also enjoyed exceptional success in competitive bidding for funds from the government’s Joint Infrastructure Fund, the Science Research Investment Fund and the Capital Investment Fund. On the basis of research excellence and volume, we are investing more than £360 million in state-of-the-art infrastructure, facilitating cutting-edge research across a broad range of disciplines.

We are world leaders across the breadth of academic disciplines – from neuroscience to urban planning, particle physics to health informatics and environmental law – and we have an ongoing commitment to innovation and relevance.

Our vision is matched by a unique set of strengths, including our location in one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. UCL – London’s global university – has the opportunity and the obligation to contribute to tackling the major problems facing the world.

We embrace and celebrate the outstanding problem- and curiosity-driven research conducted by individuals and small groups. However, we can only address complex and systemic challenges by harnessing our collective expertise, by working across and beyond traditional disciplines.

We are positioning ourselves to build exponentially on our contribution to date. We are forming alliances and collaborations, across multiple disciplines, focused on issues of global significance. Initially, we have committed our research to address four Grand Challenges. We are establishing mechanisms whereby our expertise and analysis of these challenges can be brought into public fora to engage funding agencies, opinion-formers and legislators.

We will realise this vision in strategic partnership with other world-class universities, local and national governmental bodies, non-governmental organisations, the NHS, funding bodies and charities. We hope that you will consider the role that you or your organisation could play in our work.