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In order to sustain and advance our position as a world-leading, research-intensive university, it is fundamentally important that research and innovation support is delivered effectively.
Project approach
The RIST team has been working with colleagues from across UCL and from both academic and professional services areas, to better understand complex issues, design solutions, and implement changes.
The transformer has been managed in three distinct stages:
- Discovery (June 2019 to October 2019)
The purpose of the discovery stage was to examine what works well, what doesn’t work well, and to identify the systemic issues that impact on researcher experience and compliance outcomes.
We worked with over 170 members of the UCL community to highlight key themes.
We have summarised the outputs of our discovery work in four Discovery reports and a set of problem statements on SharePoint.
- Design (November 2019 to May 2020)
Between November and April 2020 the RIST team continued to work with colleagues across UCL to consider the learnings from the discovery stage and design a new operating model for Research and Innovation Support.
We developed several options for how UCL could deliver research and innovation support in the future to meet the needs of the UCL community, deliver a high-quality service and improve our compliance with terms and conditions, policies and regulations.
- Delivery (June 2020 to July 2022)
The aim of the delivery stage is to implement the operating model, leading to improvements in researcher experience and compliance outcomes.
In June 2020 the vision and target operating model for research and innovation support services were approved along with a series of high-priority delivery projects.
Find out more about what we have delivered so far and what we are currently working on.
Progress and next steps
Under the oversight of the Research Operations Committee (ROC) and now the Research Operations Group, RIST has worked closely with several teams across UCL to deliver a range of improvement projects including:
- supporting the development of a new online training course ‘Fundamentals of Research Funding Management’;
- setting up the Research and Innovation Services (RIS) division to integrate research, innovation and enterprise support at UCL;
- developing the Research and Innovation Support Portal as a one-stop point of access for all research and innovation support and guidance;
- and transitioning the service and support of Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs)
We have several initiatives underway with the objective of improving internal governance, controls and compliance and delivering IT systems and processes that provide the right support for all faculties and departments.
Find out more about our plans and progress so far on our SharePoint