Graduate Prospectus 2014–15 | 23
Research impact Oxford is one of the world’s leading research universities – a place where some of the brightest and best minds in the world look at advancing core research in all fields and addressing some of the toughest challenges facing the world today. These challenges include reducing poverty, tackling disease, preventing climate change, coping with ageing populations, developing new energy sources, and conserving biodiversity. In the course of its history, Oxford has produced over 50 Nobel Prize winners and its current academic community includes 80 Fellows of the Royal Society and 100 Fellows of the British Academy, the UK’s most distinguished academic bodies. The scale of research activity at Oxford is substantial, involving more than 70 departments, more than 5,700 faculty and staff involved in research, and 5,500 graduate research students. In the last Research Assessment Exercise held at a national level in the UK, Oxford submitted the largest number of researchers of any UK university spread over 48 different fields, and was judged to have the largest volume of world-leading research (rated the top score of 4*).
Award-winning research Oxford academics are regularly recognised by prestigious international prizes. Recent examples include the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, given to Professor Fiona Powrie in 2012 for her pioneering research into the human immune system; the L’ORÉAL-UNESCO for Women in Science Awards, bestowed on Professor Frances Ashcroft in 2012; the International Balzan Prize, awarded to Professor Reinhard Strohm in 2012; and the Phyllis Goodhart Gordon Prize for Music to Professor Elizabeth Eva Leach. Our Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary prize for Higher Education in 2011, bringing the total number of Queen’s Anniversary prizes won by Oxford to eight, more than any other university. To continue this tradition of research excellence, the University is committed to recruiting and retaining researchers of the highest potential and distinction, to attracting the very best research students nationally and internationally, and to providing a supportive research environment in which scholars, at every stage of their career, can flourish. It is also committed to fostering research collaboration regionally, nationally and internationally, and to building partnerships with other research institutions, research agencies, funding bodies, industrial and commercial partners, sponsors and benefactors.
www.ox.ac.uk/research
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We have the best libraries, laboratories, museums and collections, and the best array of scholars in the world, I would say.” Dr Sally Mapstone, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education)
Photograph by Mimi Zou, DPhil Law (St John’s College)