The School of Biological Sciences is a participant in a competition which recognises the importance of economic and social impact alongside excellent research.
The Government’s impact agenda, to measure the wider social and economic benefit of research, is big news for researchers today, so research councils request an impact summary with all applications for funding and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) plan to assess research impact as part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) with up to 25% of scores based on impact.
As part of their commitment to the impact agenda, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have been running a competition called Excellence with Impact 2011, with a £150,000 prize awarded to the department most effective in introducing significant culture change which values impact as well as research excellence.
The School of Biological Sciences, now part of the Institute of Integrative Biology, has embraced this culture change by embedding impact activities into research life and is one of twenty competitors to be judged in November with the winner announced in March 2011.
Leading by example and with support from Business Gateway, the School appointed an impact officer, Professor Huw Rees, to help improve and enhance its impact activities and new systems are now in place to record and monitor these activities.