Founded in 1826,UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world’s top universities, as reflected by performance in a range of international rankings and tables.UCL currently has over 35,000 students from 150 countries and over 11,000 employees. Our annual income is over £1bn. UCL has a global reputation for excellence in research and is committed to delivering impact and innovations that enhance the lives of people in the UK, across Europe and around the world. UCL was identified by the UK Research Excellence Framework as the top university in the UK for research strength and UCL is consistently placed in the global top 20 across a wide range of university rankings (currently joint 7th in the QS World University Rankings). UCL’s total competitively awarded research income annually stands at an impressive € 530 million, of which 10% is European funded research & innovation. UCL is one of the leading recipients of European Framework Programme grants, with over 250 Horizon 2020 projects and 700 projects funded during the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
Tackling the grand challenges of the 21st century, from climate change to ageing populations, requires actors in the public, private and third sectors to work together in new and dynamic ways in order to drive innovation. In this dynamic context, the public sector cannot limit itself to simply facilitating business, by fixing market failures, but needs to actively co-create and shape the markets of the future to help achieve these societal goals. This implies a fundamental break with economic orthodoxy and a move towards radical new thinking about how to justify, nurture and evaluate public policy driven by the idea of public purpose. The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL is a new Institute designed to address these questions and challenges. It is founded and directed by Mariana Mazzucato.