Author: Guy Poppy

Global ambitions, sharper focus

Posted on by Guy Poppy

A few months into his role as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Professor Guy Poppy reports on his impressions so far and his priorities for the immediate future. 

Professor Guy Poppy

Since my arrival here, I’ve been very pleased to find that the positive aspects which drew me to Bristol are playing out. This truly is a comprehensive university, with research strengths from science, engineering and medicine through to theatre, music, economics and beyond.  

I’ve been speaking to many people, hearing about the range and brilliance of our researchers and thinking about how we can bring that talent together. We want Bristol to be one of the world’s top 50 universities, and to be known globally as a great place to come and work – and a key route to that objective is joining up our world-class research teams into new combinations that cross disciplines and specialisms, to tackle the big, important societal challenges – climate change, healthy aging, feeding the world sustainably, and so on.  

I’ll give just one example among many.  

AI + powerful data = healthcare revolution 

Our already impressive standing in artificial intelligence has achieved a step-change with Isambard-AI, which will become the UK’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer when it opens this summer (it’s actually been online since last June, facilitating research that includes treatments for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s). Bristol was named AI University of the Year in 2024 and will play a prominent role in the government’s plan to establish the UK’s sovereign AI capability. 

We’re also uniquely placed in the UK through our Department of Population Health, especially since the launch of our Children of the 90s programme three decades ago – one of the most recognised and important epidemiological studies in the world. The Children of the 90s cohorts have helped our teams produce powerful data which is helping to drive research into cancer and a whole range of other illnesses. 

Say, then, that you combine these two outstanding examples: Bristol could become known for driving a revolution in which people’s health has been improved through artificial intelligence.    

I’ve given a great amount of thought to my priorities as PVC for Research and Innovation. I’m going to concentrate on four here.  

1. Concentrating the message

Bristol is excellent at many, many things, but to sharpen your profile effectively, it can be better to push a few things very hard rather than diluting the message across 20 or 30 of them – even though there are easily that many at Bristol. That goes back to uniqueness: picking the five things to concentrate on telling people about – our ‘superbrands’, if you like.  

Our academic schools and faculties have a clear idea of their strengths; my job is to consider those strengths in the context of the whole institution, so that, for example, if I visit Harvard University and ask what they think Bristol’s known for, they can tell me because we have ensured that the quality and impact of our research has achieved global recognition. 

2. Making a bigger splash

At the same time, conveying the impact of all the work we do is important. Universities need to illustrate the important part they play in society, beyond educating theirstudents, and this is no different for Bristol. Innovation – also part of my brief – can have a high impact, for example by finding new and better ways of doing things, changing public behaviour, or driving the launch of new businesses or whole new sectors.  

I want to ensure that the incredible work that happens at Bristol gets better reach to people in the city and beyond, by making a positive, palpable impact on their daily lives. Our new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus, for example, will enable lots of local businesses to work with academics. Many of those academics are now keen to be able to say that their work has changed public policy, led to the launch of a company or made their field more attractive for people to come and study. We do really have the opportunity to shape the future.

3. Building our culture

Every seven to eight years, UK universities undertake a government-mandated exercise called the Research Excellence Framework (REF), which assesses university research. Bristol did exceptionally well last time, coming fifth in the country. The next REF takes place in 2029, and we’re already planning how to ensure that our research excellence continues to be recognised in those results. 

One part of the REF that has increased in importance is ‘people, culture and environment’.  That’s all about how you attract and retain researchers by investing in buildings, supporting teamwork, and maintaining high standards of integrity. Professor Marcus Munafo, our outgoing Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research Culture, has done a lot of groundwork to bring these areas together at Bristol. The next stage is making sure that all parts of the University benefit from the tools, workshops and resources that Marcus and his colleagues have established. This will also ensure that Bristol becomes known as a great place to conduct research and have a fulfilling and rewarding career. For example, Professor Harry Mellor (associate PVC for postgraduates) is ensuring that we excel in PhD training and that we help develop the next generation of researchers. 

These things are already starting to happen, and if we ensure that our culture and environment consistently supports and encourages our researchers, we should score well not just in REF2029, but long afterwards.

4. Supercharging enterprise and innovation

Universities are often good at spinning out small companies and developing patents, but they’re perhaps less successful at scaling up to big enterprises that generate significant numbers of jobs and money. As the need to find income streams from sources other than student fees or the government becomes more pressing, it’s prudent to look at opportunities for enlarging our ambitions in this area. 

Take our National Composites Centre: our teams there are great at producing what our industries need. So what other knowledge do we generate that might service those needs? Who we should be working with, and how? Professor Michelle Barbour, our Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Innovation, has been leading our efforts in this area, and I’ll be working with her and her team closely to develop these activities further. 

We receive a lot of public funds, and we need to demonstrate that they’re well spent, for example by illustrating how investment in a piece of research can ultimately lead to something groundbreaking, such as the smart phones we all now carry around. 

Final thoughts 

A university needs to balance its books and make sensible decisions. That doesn’t mean that we should only do things that make loads of money and start to shut down things that don’t. But we must prove ourselves accountable for the public monies we spend and demonstrate the value and impact of our many substantial contributions to society, to the economy and to human knowledge. There is an important role for discovery, as my former colleague and now Minister of Science, Lord Vallance, has recognised. 

I’m confident that the University of Bristol will achieve this and more, and I’m looking forward to helping our staff, students and partners to realise our ambition of taking our place in the top 50 universities in the world. 

 

Bristol Research: taking stock and looking ahead

Posted on by Guy Poppy

Joining the University of Bristol as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise would have been an exciting prospect in any given year, but doing so in 2020 has really brought to life the depth of expertise that exists across the institution.

Thanks to the support of colleagues across our community, I’ve been able to fully immerse myself in Bristol’s vibrant research environment. I’ve also witnessed the University’s hugely impressive and inspiring research response to COVID-19.

Six months into the role, my respect and appreciation for the dedication, skill, and agility with which staff and students contribute to Bristol’s scholarly, educational, and civic endeavour has only grown.

Strategic ambitions

As PVC-R&E, one of my key responsibilities is to shape Bristol’s research and knowledge exchange activity in line with the University’s strategic ambitions. In doing so, I want to ensure that our strategic direction expresses the intellectual curiosity and desire to make a positive impact that drives so many colleagues.

It was clear in my first few days just how strongly Bristol’s culture is rooted in an ethos of community, co-production, and social responsibility. It’s important that our institution-level thinking reflects these qualities, and our motivations for doing research.

The Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus, for instance, is a fantastic example of how the University can both serve our local and global communities and deliver on our civic, business and research ambitions. It will set the stage for us to develop future relationships and collaborations and represents an exciting new chapter for our University. I aim to ensure that it remains very much rooted in a shared academic vision that helps us foster innovation and positive civic impact across the board.

Striking the right balance

As a world-class research institution, I see our university as an exceptionally skilled tight-rope walker; one able to successfully bridge daunting rifts due to our ability to retain and recalibrate a delicate balance. This is the balance between discovery-led research that helps define the challenges of the future, and challenge-led research, which helps to address and solve existing ones. It is also the balance between interdisciplinary excellence and its roots in strong core disciplines.

What it’s not, however, is the status quo. Rather, this ability to recognise the need for adjustment and responsiveness helps us find ways to reach an equilibrium that is inclusive, diverse, and all the stronger for it.

What’s next?

A key priority for the coming weeks and months is to focus on what further immediate support can be provided to help mitigate against COVID-related research and enterprise disruption.

I will also work with colleagues to ensure that the quality of Bristol’s research base receives the recognition it deserves, for instance via the Research Excellence Framework, and that we are ready to respond to whatever new research landscape is shaped by Brexit.

Longer-term, I’m looking forward to working closely with colleagues and students across the University to determine a strategic institutional approach for how our fantastic research portfolio can help address key structural issues linked with, or caused by, challenges such as Brexit, climate change, or persistent social inequalities.

I want to celebrate our unique strengths by raising the profile of the University’s research and enterprise activities, both within the institution and beyond. To do so, I’ll engage with a wide range of partners, develop strategies to further enhance these strengths and explore how they can be translated into positive societal impact at the regional, national, and international level.

My own research area, in which I have worked for over 25 years, is energy systems. Pursuing ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions and becoming carbon neutral by 2050 happens to be a great example of where further defining and supporting existing focus areas of Bristol’s research base can help address global challenges in a sustainable and fair way.

Our region is already a hub for climate expertise and Bristol was the first university in the UK to declare a climate emergency. We are also fortunate to have strong partnerships with excellent external organisations such as the Met Office. This all means we are very well placed to be at the forefront of helping to develop real world solutions to meeting ‘net zero’.

I want to identify other research areas where this type of targeted curation of established focal areas of excellence, in combination with nurturing emerging distinguished fields, can help raise our institutional profile and scale up our ambitions.

There’s no doubt this has been a uniquely challenging time for the University, but in looking ahead to the next six months and beyond, I want to ensure that we make the most of what we’ve learned during these most difficult months. The interdisciplinary, challenge-led approach personified by Bristol UNCOVER and ReCOVer are obvious examples. I want us to retain as much of the positive learning and agility we’ve gained over the last year and apply best practice to how we work together going forward.

I look forward to meeting many more of you over the coming months and to continue learning more about the incredible research happening at Bristol.

 

Bristol Digital Futures Institute: research through a different lens

Posted on by Guy Poppy

This week, we were delighted to announce the award of over £100 million in grant funding for our new Digital Futures Institute, thanks to an initial £29 million from UKRI’s Research Partnership Investment Fund and a further £71 million in match funding from some 27 companies.

The Bristol Digital Futures Institute is a great opportunity for us – and for all universities – to look at research and innovation through a different lens. The late-20th-century model involves academia working with business and technology partners on tech-driven research projects; at Bristol, and indeed elsewhere, we have believed for some time that the rapid rise and pervasiveness of digital technologies has created challenges in terms of their impact and their disruptive nature in many areas of society.

A key word for this new institute is partnership. It will be jointly led by Susan Halford, a social scientist and Professor of Sociology, and Dimitra Simeonidou, an engineer and Professor of High-Performance Networks. The large number of projects (around 30) per year that we plan to initiate will bring together our researchers in science and engineering with their peers in the social sciences and in the legal, ethical and community sectors, to create programmes on a scale that, we believe, is quite unprecedented. As you’ll see from the formidable list of local partners who have pledged support – financial, logistical, advisory – the scale is matched by the range of sectors they represent.

There will, of course, be challenges. Some of our partners have never worked outside their own sector before, so there’ll be a process of learning and absorbing each other’s values, practices and metrics of success, in order to build a foundation for true collaboration and partnership. But it’s this confluence of different disciplines in a common cause, rather than the technology, that will drive the institute’s work, and I am confident that it will lead to transformational impact in this research domain.

Co-creating the future

The institute’s physical location at our new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus is also highly appropriate to its mission and methodology. Research won’t be confined to the University lab or offices; it’ll involve people and platforms in real settings, and we will invite members of our local community, from across all socio-economic groups, to become co-creators of this exciting future.

This is what a civic university should be doing: not jealously guarding its experts and innovators, but opening its doors to the public and creating the space for two-way conversations and collaborative projects that will make a real impact on society at large

I’m tremendously excited about the prospects for this new institute and the groundswell of support that we’ve already received for it. We’ll work hard to fulfil those prospects, and I look forward to seeing them take shape – and to being surprised by the outcomes, which none of us can entirely predict at the start of this exciting journey.

 

Research without Borders 2019

Posted on by Guy Poppy

I have written before about how the extraordinary research taking place at our University seeks creative, unexpected solutions to global challenges that affect us all in our ordinary lives. This is a testament to the rich, interdisciplinary research culture we foster here at Bristol, and our drive to push the boundaries of knowledge through mutual discovery, collaboration and connections.

The University’s Research without Borders festival celebrates those members of the community who are the engines behind these collaborations and innovations: our postgraduate researchers. Often positioned out of sight from the public, they are the ones turning up each day to drive experiments, conversations and studies forward.

Research without Borders 2019 brings together postgraduate researchers from across disciplines to showcase some of the latest research that is taking place here at Bristol, and to celebrate the vital role our research students play in developing our renowned research profile.

And, perhaps more significantly, the festival aims to put this research into conversation with the wider community around us, and to create a space for connecting with our emerging generation of future researchers.

I warmly encourage anyone with an interest in asking questions, embracing surprises, and thinking creatively to attend this year’s Research without Borders events. The line-up is a fantastic multidisciplinary exploration of some of our key areas of research:

8th May: Chaired by the Cabot Institute, Bristol’s One City Plan: an interdisciplinary dialogue on a sustainable future city promises to be a lively discussion of the ambitious plan to make Bristol fair, healthy and sustainable by 2050.

9th May: Measurable humans: how good does our digital health look? held in collaboration with the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute and our newly-funded EPSRC Digital Health and Care Centre for Doctoral Training, will be an interdisciplinary exploration of innovations and challenges in the digital health sector.

15th May: Showcase Exhibition at Colston Hall, where over 50 interactive, hands-on displays featuring the work of our postgraduate researchers will take over this iconic Bristol building. The showcase event is always a highlight of the University’s calendar, with something of interest for everyone. This year, we are exploring new ways of communicating research, and have commissioned an artwork with acclaimed artist Zoe Cameron produced in collaboration with some of our students to feature as a centrepiece to reflect on what ‘research without borders’ means.

It is important to remember that the problems our academics, students and peers work on in all universities are issues that are not confined by borders – geographical, disciplinary or otherwise. Today’s complex issues affect us all in one way or another. Research without Borders is a festival which celebrates what happens when we work across borders: whether it is our researchers working across disciplines, or our academic community reaching out across to our city’s community.

I look forward to seeing many of you in attendance at this year’s events, and to hearing your own contributions and insights to the research on offer.

Record £50 million funding boost will train our next generation of researchers

Posted on by Guy Poppy

I have written before on what a fantastic environment Bristol provides for research, innovation and enterprise.

But at the beginning of this week we received news from a major funder that both confirms this and allows us all to celebrate and affirm our research culture.

The Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) has announced the outcome of the 2018 funding round for Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs)

The excellent news for us here at Bristol is that we have been awarded funding to lead a record nine of these Centres.

This is the largest number for any University in the UK and makes up 12 per cent of the nation’s total EPSRC CDT investment – providing around £50m of support to train our future researchers.

Our CDTs span robotics, data science, quantum engineering, digital health, composite materials, chemical synthesis, cyber security, aerosol science and statistics.

This is an enormous achievement and I am delighted with the confidence and support we have received from key industrial partners to equip our researchers with the skills they need to meet the industry needs.

This sector-leading success speaks to the excellence of our research of course, but also to the expertise and quality of our postgraduate research environment, built up over many years and many funding sources, to create and support these cohort-led centres.

The work of our Research and Enterprise Development team in leading this major funding bid has been vital and of the highest quality.

The Bristol Doctoral College (BDC) has also been key and will play a huge part in supporting the Centres as they set up and progress.

I am incredibly proud of this success and look forward to sharing the contributions from our CDT Research Teams in the coming months.

Celebrating the real difference our universities make

Posted on by Guy Poppy

By Professor Nishan Canagarajah, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research.

Working at one of the UK’s leading universities, in a role where I regularly meet with students, researchers and peers from across the higher education sector, it’s easy to forget how extraordinary this environment is.

I use the word extraordinary, which is both accurate and perhaps a little misleading. What happens at universities is extraordinary in that they provide unique and far-reaching opportunities for people to discover, learn, collaborate, push the boundaries of knowledge and grow new ideas into ventures that drive world-leading innovation.  But it’s also ordinary in that the challenges that we work on are global and confront us all, in our everyday lives.

In the 25 years that I’ve been with the University of Bristol, I’m continually impressed and inspired by how ideas are taken to fruition, sometimes in unexpected ways and often to levels of success that have surpassed expectations – and made an impact on a vast scale.

I am immensely proud of the work of our academics here at the University of Bristol who are working with fellow researchers in more than 40 countries, improving health, alleviating poverty, driving technological innovation.

This month sees the launch of MadeAtUni, a campaign spearheaded by Universities UK that aims to highlight the enormous impact that UK universities make on our lives.

One of Bristol’s many seminal research projects is included in ‘The UK’s Best Breakthroughs: 100+ Ways Universities Have Improved Everyday Life’, produced by UUK as part of the campaign. (more…)