Research and development
As a modern university Reading not only creates new knowledge, but also uses and shares its research and resources to enhance innovation in industry. It solves real world problems and improves the strength of the UK economy through collaborative R&D programmes and consultancy.
In the last 5 years alone, the University has delivered over 2000 projects, bringing together specialist multi-disciplinary research teams to address the needs of clients across a wide spectrum of business, research and development activities in a variety of markets.
Much of our high quality research is applied and we have strengthened our relevance to end-users through the formation of a number of multi-disciplinary areas of research.
The University of Reading has an international reputation for the quality and relevance of its research, across areas as diverse as Life Sciences, Arts and humanities, Social Sciences Research and Henley Business School.
Interdisciplinary research areas of particular strength include:
Climate Systems Science
Climate systems science is a significant area of excellence for the University and a topic of huge importance to business. The inter-disciplinary Walker Institute for Climate Systems Science brings together our unrivalled climate expertise. Hosted in our world leading meteorology department, it draws together experts from mathematics, agricultural sciences, human and environmental sciences, and social sciences.
Preventative and Therapeutic Health Sciences
Research addresses fundamental societal and governmental concerns focussing on the relationship between food and health (Food Chain and Health), cardiovascular and metabolic health (the Institute for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Research), and cognitive health (Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics).
Sustainable Construction and Environments
Reading has an international reputation in construction management, and in real estate and planning. Research is focussed in the areas of inclusive environments, construction cost management, sustainable buildings, energy management in buildings, and infrastructure and services systems.
The Technologies for Sustainable Built Environments (TSBE) Centre at the University is an Industrial Doctorate Centre for training Research Engineers to Engineering Doctorate (EngD) qualifications in the areas of sustainable built environments and energy management. The Centre is committed to working collaboratively with the UK construction and energy sectors to encourage the development of an industrial knowledge-base to meet challenging sustainability and climate change issues by reducing environmental impact of construction and the carbon footprint.
Computational Science and Informatics
Our research tackles complex scientific and engineering problems under the unifying concept of computation, bringing together our world class experts from mathematics, natural sciences, economics and engineering. This research provides the platform for other disciplines to make significant breakthroughs that are difficult to achieve by traditional means. To support our data intensive areas of research we have invested in one of the largest high performance computers in the world ( ThamesBlue).
In addition, the Henley Business School at Reading is one of Europe's leading business schools and our academic expertise in typography has lead to the formation of the Simplification Centre, which focuses on the way written information can be presented to promote effective communication.
