Research Excellence Framework in the context of "Imperial College Faculty of Engineering"

The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as the Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery), and Mason Science College (established in 1875 by Sir Josiah Mason), making it the first English civic or 'red brick' university to receive its own royal charter, and the first English unitary university. It is a founding member of both the Russell Group of British research universities and the international network of research universities, Universitas 21.

The student population includes 24,585 undergraduate and 12,250 postgraduate students (2023/24), which is the 11th largest in the UK (out of 169). The annual income of the university for 2023–24 was £926 million of which £205.2 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £726.5 million. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, the University of Birmingham ranked equal 13th out of 129 institutions on grade point average, up from equal 31st in the previous REF in 2014.

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester is one of the largest and most active physics departments in the UK, taking around 330 new undergraduates and 50 postgraduates each year, and employing more than 80 members of academic staff and over 100 research fellows and associates. The department is based on two sites: the Schuster Laboratory on Brunswick Street and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Cheshire, international headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

According to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the department is the 9th best physics department in the world and best in Europe. It is ranked 2nd place in the UK by Grade Point Average (GPA) according to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2021, being only behind the University of Sheffield. The University has a long history of physics dating back to 1874, which includes 12 Nobel Prize laureates, most recently Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their discovery of graphene.

The Russell Group is a self-selected association of twenty-four public research universities in the United Kingdom. The group is headquartered in Cambridge and was established in 1994 to represent its members' interests, principally to government and Parliament. It was incorporated in 2007. Its members are often perceived as being the UK's best universities, which has been widely disputed.

As of 2017, Russell Group members receive over three-quarters of all university research grant and contract income in the United Kingdom. Russell Group members award 60% of all doctorates gained in the United Kingdom. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, Russell Group universities accounted for 65% of all world-leading (4*) research conducted in the UK, and 91% of the Russell Group's research was judged to be world-leading (4*) or internationally excellent (3*). In the 2023 Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF), of the 20 English Russell Group universities which were assessed, 7 hold gold awards (35%) and 13 silver (65%). This compares to proportions across 128 higher education institutions of which 29% hold gold, 62% silver, and 9% bronze. Their graduates hold 61% of all UK jobs that require a university degree, despite being only 17% of all higher education graduates.

The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as the Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery), and Mason Science College (established in 1875 by Sir Josiah Mason), making it the first English redbrick university to receive its own royal charter, and the first English unitary university. It is a founding member of both the Russell Group of British research universities and the international network of research universities, Universitas 21.

The student population includes 24,585 undergraduate and 12,250 postgraduate students (2023/24), which is the 11th largest in the UK (out of 169). The annual income of the university for 2024–25 was £1.072 billion of which £228.5 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £1.068 billion. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, the University of Birmingham ranked equal 13th out of 129 institutions on grade point average, up from equal 31st in the previous REF in 2014.