The RAE 2008 results have now been published.
The Fire Group was part of the School of Engineering submission that was ranked 3rd in the UK and 1st in Scotland in research quality and quantity. According to the analysis by Research Fortnight, in terms of total volume of world-leading research in engineering the top 2 are Cambridge and Oxford. Edinburgh is 3rd and Imperial College 4th.
The Head of School said "This is an extremely encouraging result that recognises the quality, scope and volume of research in our interdisciplinary Research Institutes, addressing major research challenges that include Energy, Bio-Engineering and Fire Safety". It is not often that we see energy and bio associated to fire in an multidisciplinary institution with nearly 100 research staff members (!!).
In other disciplines, Edinburgh was ranked at the very top in Computer Science, Chemistry, Medicine, Architecture, Mathematics, Linguistics, English Literature among others.
The RAE is one of two main sources of research money in UK higher education. Sixty-seven panels of 900 experts look at the work of researchers in discipline and award stars. The higher-education funding councils that mount the RAE use this information to award grants to universities.
* UK research funding and RAE issues are better explained in this article of The Economist: University funding. Chronicle of a death foretold, Jun 22nd 2006
From The Economist.
*Clips and more on the RAE 2008 results at University's website (accessible only from the @ed domain).
* An explanation of RAE results in the context of Computer Science is provided here
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