Research Institutes in United Kingdom

The UK has hundreds of research institutes and leads the world in many fields of research. Apart from the US no country has won that many Noble prizes in the fields of science, medicine, economics and mathematics. In fact the University of Cambridge, UK’s preeminent higher education institution, leads the world’s universities with the most Nobel laureates. There are seven key research councils responsible for funding a substantial portion of the research that takes place in research institutes and universities in the UK. They are the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). There are also numerous funding sources directly available in government, the private sector (particularly pharmaceuticals) and the non-governmental sector. In the non-governmental sector there are perhaps only a few organisations with a comparable prominence to Cancer Research UK, which supports the work of more than 4,800 researchers, doctors and nurses throughout the UK, fighting cancer on all fronts.