Financial Statements 2017/18


Review of operations


Research and business


Research


We had some notable grant successes including an EPSRC grant for £245k awarded to Professor Richard Bayford for research into a nanoparticle imaging method for drug discovery and cancer therapy in humans, and a grant of £293k awarded to Professor Laurent Pech for his contribution to a Horizon 2020 project to study Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law. We also concluded our Visual Analytics for sense-making in Criminal Intelligence Analysis (VALCRI), where we led a consortium of 18 international organisations to develop a tool to analyse and investigate criminal activity and are currently exploring opportunities for commercialisation of this €13 million project.


In addition to grant income, a further important element of our strategy is that:


our research, practice and knowledge exchange will have real-world impact and enhance our external reputation as an applied institution engaged with tackling complex issues to improve lives.


To this end, Dr Neelam Raina and Professor Brad Blitz have recently been appointed to highly prestigious positions where they will act as powerful role models for our students.


Dr Neelam Raina, an Associate Professor in History of Art Design and Visual Culture was appointed by UK Research and Innovation as one of only nine national Challenge Leaders to the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The GCRF is a £1.5 billion fund and part of the UK’s Official Development Assistance’s (ODA) commitment to develop innovative solutions that will improve the lives of people around the world.


Professor Brad Blitz has been appointed as the UK Aid Director to manage the British Academy’s research programme to tackle slavery, human trafficking and child labour in modern business programmes. This is a fully funded partial secondment for the next three years and a strong endorsement of his world-leading reputation for research into this global problem.


We have already started preparing for the forthcoming REF assessments and all of our faculties now have working groups in place. We aim to increase our activities from the


24 Middlesex University


start of the upcoming academic year following publication of key documents that will define the criteria and processes in a much greater detail. These include a Code of Practice which will guide our internal processes for the preparation of our submission.


While the government has announced a commitment to increase the UK’s investment in research and development to 2.4% of GDP by 2027, and in the future to 3%, the environment for research grant applications remains very competitive and current Research and Development expenditures increased only very slightly since 2015. Brexit, moreover, will see a reduction – in the short run at least, depending on the government’s plans beyond the transition period – in EU collaborative research grant funding. We are therefore careful to engage where we can in research which, as the Universities Minister recently said, is not ‘disconnected from the wider world’. Our ambition remains to at least maintain our current level of quality-related research funding in the next REF while ensuring that the research we do has a positive impact beyond our walls and benefits our students.


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