Impact in the Biosciences

Bioscience has an important role to play in our future social and economic well-being, on a national and international scale. It can lead to major benefits:

Advances in agriculture and crop technology can help fight world hunger
Innovations in food and nutritional science can lead to everyday improvements in health
Innovative technology can boost the leading role of British business

These 'impacts' are an important feature of research undertaken in the School of Biosciences. Because of this, the School has driven initiatives aimed at stimulating a strong culture of impact among its staff. Impact has been increasingly recognised as a key feature by UK research councils, and the School's achievements within this area mark it out as a leading institution in the drive to maximise research impact.

The School of Biosciences has a long standing tradition for delivering excellent teaching and research and this has been formally recognised by its performance in the most recent Research Assessment (RAE2008) exercise. In these highly competitive times our outputs are increasingly under the spotlight and the School is actively engaged in evaluating the impact of its activities. These web pages provide an account of how the teaching and research that we undertake impacts on students, end users, industry and the local community.

Dr Paul Wilson

Chair - Knowledge Transfer and Outreach Group

What is Knowledge Transfer?

Knowledge Transfer is, simply put, the filtering of the high-level research expertise located within the School to those that could benefit from such expertise. This can include industry, farmers, the general public, other academics, as well as non-academics working in and around the Sutton Bonington campus where the School is based. Disseminating this expertise is a key priority for the School, with a number of initiatives generated in recent years designed to provide stakeholders with the information they need as efficiently and as effectively as possible. Knowledge Transfer is also a feature that is embedded in much of the work carried out at the School. Public talks are just one way in which the School participates in Knowledge Transfer.