Environment
The support of research teams is one of the University's strategic objectives, ensuring staff have resources to meet the School research development plan. This gives the Team access to some of the most modern and well-equipped laboratories in environmental and analytical science in the UK, in addition to the Team's own dedicated spacious laboratories and greenhouses. The University has invested heavily, allocating significant SRIF2 (£479,170), SRIF3 (£414,045), and its own capital funding (£150,000) to the Team and other teams submitting to UoA13. SRIF funding followed a competitive process involving other University science-based areas. The University has allocated a further £100,000 for development of science laboratories in the School in 2007 and the Team will benefit from the re-development of the City Campus (£40M) over the next five years.
Recently the School revised the structure of its research teams in response to staff recruitment and change in research interests of existing staff. A strong driver was a vision of the development of research, including new opportunities for collaboration, delivering research across national and disciplinary boundaries. The revision has also enabled the research teams to work more integratively through the sharing of expertise and resource, and has resulted in a clearer research strategy for the School, which successfully predicted increases in research output. The strategy also enabled more and more productive collaborations, including, in the UK, with 5/5* departments. The additional benefit through collaboration is that staff maintain currency within their respective fields and competitiveness at national and international levels.
