Sustainability Report 2023/24: our progressResearch & Innovation for a Better World
Strathclyde is home to a significant number of research groups focused on reducing environmental impact and managing a just transition towards a fairer and greener future. Our role as Scotland Hub lead for the UK Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) allows us to lead from the front lines of Sustainability focused work and build connections between academia and industry.
Research culture & enabling environment
To facilitate inclusive research and innovation culture with industry, public and third sector, Strathclyde received close to £1m from Wellcome Trust as part of their 'Cultures of Collaborative Research in a Socially Progressive Technological University' project.
In addition to this, we have developed a programme for researchers entitled Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), funded through our EPSRC and ESRC Impact Acceleration Accounts. This ensures that aspects of innovation are explored through two-way engagement with all stakeholders, including funders, researchers, potential users and community groups.
Research contributions to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
We look to the sustainable development agenda as our guiding torch for our teaching and research. Our ambition is for all education and research activities to contribute towards achieving the SDGs.
We assess this using data from our research information management system (Pure), which tracks the level of staff engagement in SDG related work, and the proportion of research outputs that are related to one or more SDG.
Our data shows steady yearly progress in placing SDGs at the heart of what we do since the implementation of Vision 2025, due to significant investments in sustainability and capabilities as well as collaborative work between internal teams and external stakeholders.
Staff working on SDGs
In 2023/24, 20% of all 2,944 staff profiles found in Pure were linked to at least one SDG. This ranged from 14% in the Faculty of Science to 28% in the Business School.
There were staff linked to all 17 SDGs and the most supported was ‘SDG3 – Good Health and Wellbeing’, with almost 300 staff profiles linked to this SDG across all faculties.
Based on analysis of research outputs and the way staff profiles are tagged, we believe the real proportion of staff contributing to SDG related work to be higher.
Research outputs
This year, 34% of all research outputs logged in Pure were aligned to at least one SDG. This was up by 4% compared to the previous year, continuing the steady upward trend from just 6% in 2019/20. This increase was seen across all four faculties to a similar degree, between 3 to 5%.
As with staff profiles, all 17 SDGs had research outputs aligned to them, and ‘SDG3 – Good Health and Wellbeing’ was the most tagged, with over 500 research outputs linked to this SDG in 2023/24.
Research projects
There were 35 active projects during 2023/24 – those that were in progress for some or all of the academic year. This year, all 35 active projects were aligned to at least one of the 17 SDGs. On average, each project was aligned with four SDGs and across all active projects there were a total of 152 SDG links.
Different SDGs were supported to varying degrees, and 15 out of the 17 SDGs were supported by at least one project this year. ‘SDG 3 Good health and wellbeing’ was supported by the greatest number of projects (24), followed by ‘SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation’ (17). Only ‘SDG 1 – No Poverty’ and ‘SDG 2 – Zero Hunger’ were not linked to any project this year.
