Academics bid for share of £6m research fund

A funding pot has been set up which academics from across the university - including those at Telford's university campus in Priorslee - can put in bids to in order to finance new research projects.

A total of 35 bids have been put forward and the successful programmes and staffing will be in place by April next year. Professor John Darling, Dean of Research at the university, said: "This is the biggest single investment the university has made into research and that is a bold move.

"This is about saying that research is at the heart of everything we do. It informs teaching, business and society.

"We want to create really excellent world class research. This is focussing both on what we already do, as well as new research, and differentiating ourselves from other institutions to make sure what we do is sustainable.

"We also have a responsibility to our students to provide them with exposure to such work. By involving them in knowledge and discoveries, they are becoming part of something exciting which they can say they were the first person ever to have performed a certain process or feat. That could be the trigger to a career in research.

"People don't always realise what great things we as a university do and we should celebrate that."

Previous research work carried out at the university has seen the discovery of one of the processes in the body that can cause type 2 diabetes, developing Europe's first metal laser sintering machine, providing breakthrough research into brain tumours and producing world-leading analysis of web content and traffic.