The University’s core value of collaboration is evidenced by its strong partnerships and the value it places in them – we intend to continue strengthening global, national and local linkages. Already, more than 75 per cent of the University’s publications feature a collaborating author from outside the University, and 71 per cent of those involve an international author.
Our membership of the University Global Partnership Network (UGPN) has seen 170 joint publications over the last five years.
Our partnerships with industry are strong and growing – we work with more than 50 per cent of companies on the Surrey Research Park. Our top industry partners include household names such as Airbus, Eli Lilly, Glaxo Smith Kline, Huawei and Rolls Royce. But we do not only work with large corporates – as a founding member of SETsquared, with our partner universities Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Southampton, which has twice been named the world’s leading university-based business incubator, we take a leading role in nurturing emerging businesses – more than 100 of them in the last year. Latterly, through the SPace Research and Innovation Network for Technology (SPRINT), we have also teamed up with Leicester, Edinburgh, the Open University and Southampton to drive new business opportunities in the digital space sector. And when we create and nurture a new business, we are often able to support it financially through the S100 Club Angel Investment Network, and our own University Strategic Seed Fund Ltd.
We continue our strong commitment to making a difference locally, working closely with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), as a strategic partner with Strathclyde University and the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, including hosting the NPL South regional hub, with focuses on the space sector, medical imaging and digital health, quantum technology and telecommunications. Similarly, we have relationships with organisations such as the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, NHS Surrey and Borders Partnership, the Pirbright Institute, the Atomic Weapons Establishment, the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory, Guildford Borough Council and Surrey County Council, all of whom are well placed to help extend the scope of our research and help us deliver impact and innovation.
As part of NPL’s Postgraduate Institute, we jointly supervise more than PhD students, playing the largest role of any university nationally. Indeed, Surrey places great importance on its postgraduate research student community and our Doctoral College as the hub for research and innovation training – the success of its recent efforts is measured by its 7th place nationally in the 2018 PRES survey of postgraduate research student satisfaction. As the Doctoral College grows over the next few years, we will increase our emphasis on producing highly employable PhD graduates suited for careers within and beyond academia and integrating our upskilling along the journey from undergraduate to postgraduate to postdoctoral and early-career researchers and alumni.
An important element in this inclusive, collaborative ecosystem is how we support the connecting of our capabilities within Surrey. One avenue is through research themes, and currently established themes of Urban Living and Sustainability provide opportunities for researchers from many disciplines across the campus to interact and to discover new opportunities to work together. New themes will be forthcoming over the next period and will draw upon emerging examples of collaboration, for example, in AI and in digital health. An important element in working together is our emphasis on equality, diversity and inclusion, and the practice of our value of respect. The University holds an Athena SWAN Bronze Award, and our Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is leading efforts to raise our level to Silver.
Research infrastructure is well recognised at Surrey for its vital role in building distinctive capability and opportunity. The Ion Beam Centre is unique in the UK, and the Satellite Control Room is the only one based in a UK university. The Surrey Research Park is nationally leading, as is the 5G testbed, turning our campus into a living laboratory, which will be further augmented by the forthcoming Learning Hotel and Global HOM campus home. Our sleep laboratories in the Surrey Clinical Research Centre provide us with the rare capacity to conduct overnight studies on patients, and our School of Veterinary Medicine has a digital pathology capability matched only by a few other places in the UK. These examples demonstrate our commitment to creating and sustaining world-class facilities at Surrey.