REF engineering impact case studies worth ‘billions’, says report

The aerospace and life sciences industries were mentioned in more than a quarter of surveyed impact case studies in engineering submitted to the Research Excellence Framework, which had the combined value of "billions of pounds", a report has estimated.

The report on engineering research and postgraduate training in the UK, which was jointly published by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council on 2 March, investigated engineering case studies from 46 universities ahead of the publication of the REF results.

The authors carried out text mining of the case studies to explore which areas of industry the impact was said to be felt in. They found that 27 per cent of the case studies cited impacts in aerospace and the life sciences, 19 per cent cited automotive industries, 15 per cent construction and 4 per cent wind energy. Other areas were mentioned in a further 30 per cent of the case studies.