Research is the oxygen that invigorates the lifeblood pulsing through the veins of any university, says Professor Brian Hobbs, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research.

We pursue research in pursuit of new knowledge and understanding driven by a spirit of academic enquiry. In keeping with our role as an institution firmly embedded in our local, regional and national communities, we also have great strengths in problem driven research conducted in partnership with external stakeholders.

We are fully committed to building on the University's strong track record in all areas of research in order to expand and enhance our contribution to knowledge generation and the application of that knowledge to problem solving with our external stakeholders.

We recognise that many issues require a multi-disciplinary approach and are setting up cross-university Research and Development Centres to bring together relevant expertise from across all our faculties to address particular themes. The first three such Centres focus on Enterprise and Entrepreneurship; Regeneration and Sustainable Communities, and Disaster Management and Emergency Response.

We received excellent results in the Research Assessment Exercise 2008(RAE2008), confirming our status as one of Wales' research active Universities.