Provost's View: Research - the lifeblood of this university

It takes a special type of person to succeed in the face of the frustrations and setbacks that characterise a research career - requiring admirable reserves of enthusiasm, perseverance and creativity.

At UCL, we are extremely fortunate to have an abundance of such people, who strive for excellence in their pursuit of new knowledge. 

I had the good fortune to meet many of our early career research staff last week at an open Q&A session organised by the UCL Institute of Child Health. The talent in the room and their obvious quest to contribute to research excellence at UCL was laudable. 

The conversation was about the complexities of doing so in the modern world of research and higher education funding. This is not always an easy conversation because of the relatively low number of early academic posts, but I hope that we conveyed our desire to support our early career research staff as much as we can and help them to succeed in their future careers. 

I remember the exhilaration that I felt as a Fogarty International Research Fellow at the University of California San Francisco when I made a breakthrough, albeit small, in my work on the role of hepatic stellate cells in liver fibrosis - and it's these moments that make research such an exciting and rewarding career.

I also remember all too clearly the challenges posed by peer review and the knotty, at times frustrating, world of funding applications. 

However, these pale by comparison with the challenges faced by our academics and research staff today: post-EU referendum and post-Trump uncertainty, the pressure of REF submissions post-Stern review and the arrival of the government's higher education bill, with the creation of UK Research and Innovation and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). 

So, I want to underline to all our academic and research staff that supporting you in your research endeavours is a top priority for me - and that goes for all of UCL's senior management team (SMT) too.

Our research performance is truly outstanding and this, more than anything, drives our growing reputation across the globe.  

It is of paramount importance that we maintain the world-leading quality of our research as we deal with all the other challenges and pressures that we face. 

Of course, education is also core to UCL's mission and combining high-quality teaching with research to really inspire our students is mutually beneficial - allowing us not only to attract the best and brightest students to UCL, but also to boost substantially our reputation for academic excellence across all our activities, and our performance in world rankings.

An estate to match your aspirations

So how do I, as President & Provost of UCL, need to act in practice in order to support the academic mission? 

When I first joined in October 2013 and met with people from across the UCL community to hear your views on the matter, one strand of conversation clearly stood out to me - in order to advance research and education, we needed to invest in UCL's estate.  

Since that point, our Transforming UCL programme has been fully underway, and is a key element in supporting our research and education. 

Over a 10-year period, we will be investing £1.25 billion to develop new space and improved facilities to meet UCL's world-class aspirations and our commitment to excellence and innovation.

The UCL Estates team has made excellent progress already. In addition to UCL's new site at Here East and the soon-to-open 22 Gordon Street, significant work is taking place on the ambitious redevelopment of Bentham House (Laws), the refurbishment of the Kathleen Lonsdale Building (Maths and Physical Sciences) and the creation of a new home for the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Prion Unit at the Courtauld Building (Brain Sciences). 

Each of these projects has been developed by working closely with academic staff in order to define their needs. 

Much of this work is modernising and upgrading existing space, making it fit for purpose - less glamorous perhaps than new buildings, but no less essential if we are to maintain our research and educational excellence across all of our disciplines.

We are also aiming to create a model for the university campus of the future with our UCL East development at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

It will be open and dynamic, overcoming the conventional barriers between research, education, innovation, public engagement and collaboration.

UCL East will be a home for new research and education in engineering, the built environment, arts, humanities and social sciences, while also liberating some space and enabling new opportunities in our Bloomsbury estate. 

The work undertaken in this space will contribute significantly to our global profile over the next 10-20 years. 

In the longer term, having additional land at UCL East and the opportunity for an eventual second phase of development will be of paramount importance to the UCL of the future. We owe it to the next generation to open up that possibility. 

In an energetic and growing institution like ours, it is perhaps unsurprising that, despite our best efforts, demands for space still outstrips supply. 

However, in an era of constraint in higher education finance, Transforming UCL and UCL East have given us a framework for selecting the most important academic initiatives and delivering on the ambition of UCL 2034.  

Generating a surplus is crucial

Our much-needed investment in UCL's infrastructure is only possible if we generate a reasonable surplus each year. These surplus funds must then be carefully reinvested to support academic excellence. 

Transformation of our physical estate is certainly a key aspect of supporting the academic endeavour, but we also need appropriate investment in other aspects of our infrastructure, such as IT, as well as investment in new academic developments and the staff that we need to populate them.

Ensuring access to the funds needed for strategic reinvestment has become increasingly challenging in recent years. Domestic student tuition fees are capped, but our costs are not. 

We face ongoing reductions in direct government funding of higher education - particularly funds for capital developments that universities could previously rely on to fund infrastructure improvements. 

For this reason, and after considerable thought and care in SMT, Finance Committee and Council, UCL has set a surplus target of 5.5% of income to be achieved by 2017-18 and sustained thereafter. 

This surplus will provide the financial background and strength that is commensurate with our academic ambition. 

For UCL, this is not an easy target, but it is a very important and achievable one. For comparison, the average surplus for the UK higher education sector in 2014-15 was 6.6% and for the Russell Group it was 7%. 

I am aware of the pressure that this target places on all our faculties, departments, institutes and professional services divisions and I am immensely grateful for the effort that everyone is making for our collective future benefit. 

If we remain on course, I am confident that we will achieve our ultimate destination: an institution that is academically-led, with a combination of world-leading academic excellence, long-term financial sustainability and much improved infrastructure to support our level of academic ambition.  

I'm pleased to say that we are making good progress in our five-year financial plan, having met our surplus target again this past year (2015-16) as well as the previous two years. 

So, if we keep focused and maintain our efforts, we will hit our intended 5.5% target and be empowered to give our research and education the funding it so richly deserves.

Philanthropy and research

As you will know, in September, we officially launched our £600 million fundraising campaign, 'It's All Academic'. 

By enabling us to draw on the support of both our generous alumni and major global philanthropists and foundations, the new campaign will increase our ability to support bold new research and education. 

It will, for example, help us to build on existing funds in order to create a new cutting-edge dementia research institute in Queen Square.

The political events of 2016 are an apt demonstration of just how important philanthropy is in building the support necessary for UCL's future. It is imperative that we all give the campaign our full support.

Our reputation precedes us

Thanks to my recent trips to the US, China and Hong Kong to launch 'It's All Academic', I know just how widespread UCL's reputation is as a research powerhouse. 

One demonstration of our cross-cutting excellence was the result of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, in which UCL's 'research power' was rated top - not only in the overall results, but in each of the three assessed elements: publications and other outputs; research environment; and research impact. 

This performance represents one of the reasons why UCL has managed to hold on to a far greater than average share of research funding, despite a shrinking pot. Times Higher Education analysis (6 October 2016) of Research Council income in UK universities for 2015-16 shows UCL second only to Oxford for grant income, demonstrating how your academic excellence is supporting UCL in straitened times. 

Another measure is UCL's mean performance in global league tables, which consistently sees us rank among the world's leading universities.

Finally, the achievements of individual academics also shine through as beacons of our success. John O'Keefe's Nobel Prize, seven of our female  professors achieving Fellowship of the British Academy and the Royal Society not to mention a UK record number of Philip Leverhulme Prizes this year - all of these achievements have made people across the world, sit up and listen.

Our peer institutions around the world have certainly taken notice. Post-EU referendum, they are keen to hear our message of collaboration and excited at the prospect of forging the partnerships of equivalence that we have outlined in our Global Engagement Strategy.

With our combination of academic excellence and a secure financial position, we can seize these and many other exciting opportunities - consolidating our status in the vanguard of global research-intensive universities, despite the external political and financial pressures that will most likely come our way.

But as I put the finishing touches to this article, it has just been announced that the government is pledging an extra £2 billion towards UK research and development by 2020. 

Perhaps there is some light at the end of the long Brexit tunnel. With our plans, we are certainly ready to contribute to this brave new world.

Professor Michael Arthur
President & Provost

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