Record-breaking year in research

The University has attracted record levels of investment in its pioneering research work.

Figures for the last 12 months show that the University was awarded £250 million to fund its research in 2011/12, 37 per cent more than the £183 million received in 2010/11.

The amount is a record for any Scottish university, beating the £249 million earned by Edinburgh in 2008/09.

The investment - won in competition with other universities and research centres - supports work across a range of disciplines, including medicine, veterinary medicine, science, engineering and the humanities.

The awards are made from a variety of sources, including government, industry, commerce and charities.

The largest award was £12.6 million by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to the University’s UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre.

These record figures again show the strength and depth of the University’s research excellence, as we continue to maintain our position as one of the leading research universities in the United Kingdom.

New companies

The University also continued to contribute to the Scottish and UK economies in other ways, such as by creating new companies.

In 2011/12, University staff or students created a total of 35 new companies, the same number as in 2010/11.

The firms include EoSurgical, a medical student start-up company that designs and manufactures training tools for surgeons to improve their operating skills. The company has won numerous entrepreneurship awards.

Edinburgh also filed 62 patents to protect new inventions by research staff, and a total of 51 licence agreements to allow commercial use of technologies developed on campus.

Edinburgh and growth

Scotland’s economy benefits significantly from the University’s commercialisation work.

According to a study earlier in 2012 by independent consultancy BiGGAR Economics, the University’s commercialisation activities contribute more than £140 million to the Scottish economy per year and supports over 2,400 Scottish jobs.

In the three years to 2011-2012, Edinburgh Research and Innovation, the University's commercialisation arm, supported the formation of over 100 new businesses, making it one of the best-performing university commercialisation departments in the UK.