Research
Our work ranges in scale from nuclear physics to interplanetary space exploration, and we have an enviable reputation for the contributions we have made towards a variety of challenges faced by our society.
These challenges include improving our environment, health, communications, transport, security, information technologies, energy and water.
We believe in the importance of linking fundamental scientific research to engineering applications, so many of these activities are underpinned by strong industrial links, and several successful spin-out companies have resulted.
We are proud of our record in postgraduate training and we offer a rich variety of research topics for PhD study, through the traditional routes and also through our highly successful EngD programmes.
Find out more about our Research themes and the Centres they are conducted in.
Take a look at the research outputs for University of Surrey on the Natureindex site.
Outstanding ratings
The Faculty consists of approximately 1000 researchers, of whom 170 are academic staff, 200 are postdoctoral research assistants and the remainder are post graduate researchers.
Our annual turnover of research income is about £16M, of which about half comes from Research Councils UK (principally EPSRC), a third from the EU, and the rest mainly from industry (our largest clients being EADS Astrium, Rolls Royce, E.on, Toyota, AWE and QinetiQ).
Research Excellence Framework
In the latest UK Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014), Surrey achieved a ‘Research Power’ ranking of 22nd out of 106 institutions for its research in engineering and the physical sciences (REF Panel B).
The Faculty improved its quality rating score in each of the five key research areas where it made a submission, compared to the previous research exercise (RAE) in 2008.
Rated as world-leading or internationally excellent
- 93% of our Electrical & Electronic Engineering research
- 93% Metallurgy and Materials research
- 84% of our Physics research
In the General Engineering category, 80% of our research was also rated as world-leading or internationally excellent.