Outstanding levels of external funding (£33.5M). This represents a 28% increase per annum from REF14 (£28.5M).
Research funding | The School has had exceptional success in securing funding for its research programme, with income rising to £33.2M up from £18.6M at REF14. This reflects the ambition and quality of our staff, coupled with the enabling strategies of re-balancing workloads to allow the construction of high quality proposals, the flexibility of arranging replacement undergraduate teaching for fellowships and secondments and the School support mechanisms during the application process.
Research activities of the School are coordinated through 5 research institutes (listed below), which are directed by a senior member of staff. Research staff affiliate to at least one institute. This structure was created in 2016 with the strategic aims of promoting deep intradisciplinarity, through focussed research clusters, focussed career development, particularly of ECRs, and broad interdisciplinary research, fostering outward-looking initiatives, a longstanding feature of the School. The institute directors deploy financial resources to support these initiatives and steer the recruitment of staff and postgraduate students. Overall leadership is provided by the Head of School, advised by the School Research Committee, which comprises the Directors of the Research Institutes and the Director of Research, Director of Impact and Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).
We are a research-intensive School, authoring over 1600 outputs during the assessment period (2013-2020). Our staff publish in leading international journals such as:
◊ Annals of Mathematics
◊ Annals of Probability
◊ Annals of Statistics
◊ Communications in Mathematical Physics
◊ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature
The 5 Research Institutes:
- Institute of Applied Mathematics (12 members) spans activities in fluid dynamics, chemical physics, biological materials, soft matter, and complexity theory. Continuum theory, dynamical systems and statistical mechanics comprise the overarching framework that link these activities. Much of the research builds upon collaborations with groups outside the School.
- Institute of Mathematical Physics (14 members). Random matrix theory (RMT), quantum chaos and connections to number theory are core themesfor the Institute, alongside new initiatives.
- Institute for Probability, Analysis and Dynamics (17 members). The group tackles problems in the fluctuation theory of interacting particle systems, scaling theory of random networks and processes with long memory, stochastic processes on discrete structures and the interplay between probability, dynamics, number theory and quantum chaos.
- Institute of Pure Mathematics (14 members). With 8 new permanent appointments during the census period, the Institute of Pure Mathematic has sustained outstanding activity in number theory, combinatorics, algebra and group theory, and logic and set theory, while expanding into new areas in geometry and topology.
- The Institute for Statistical Science (17 members) has grown in size and scope, driven by the School strategic ambition in Data Science and Cybersecurity. The expertise of new staff broaden the research portfolio to include: statistical machine learning, anomaly detection and cybersecurity, energy forecasting, information theory and collaborations with the UoB Medical School. The institute hosts the COMPASS CDT and has built external partnerships with companies such as AWE, EDF, IBM, Improbable, ONS & Sparx.