Our Research and Innovation

We are accelerating our capabilities in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) through Project ADA, which has been driving investment in teaching, research and infrastructure since 2023.

We have invested £25 million in the development of our Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, strengthening our expertise, supporting innovation across disciplines, and enabling colleagues to access new tools and resources that advance their work.

Project ADA is creating opportunities for collaboration with industrial partners and developing a strong community of students, to equip the next generation of experts in this field.

We are proud to lead MetaHUB, a new £19.6 million national research collective pioneering 3D nanoscale metamaterials. Backed by UKRI and private partners, the hub brings together scientists from six leading universities to develop sustainable, next-generation materials with real-world impact across healthcare, green energy, communications and environmental sensing.

MetaHUB reflects our commitment to interdisciplinary research and transformational partnerships, supporting innovation that benefits people and the planet. Building on Exeter’s decade-long leadership in metamaterials, this work will unlock new opportunities in science and industry and help position the UK as a global leader in advanced materials.

Find out more about MetaHUB.

In July 2025, as part of our ongoing Civic University Agreement work with Devon County Council, we ran the Devon AI Summit, a flagship event designed to help local businesses harness the transformative power of AI. The summit brought together business leaders, researchers, keynote speakers and skills leads to explore how AI is already transforming industries, and what the next opportunities are.

The event demonstrated how AI is being used across our region and through interdisciplinary collaboration and strong partnerships, it highlighted our commitment to supporting regional economic growth and innovation.

Learn about the Devon AI Summit.

We are proud of our dynamic and innovative research culture, with multiple research projects receiving more than one million pounds in funding as part of a flagship programme that identifies future leaders in academic fields. 

Our University is one of only a handful of institutions to secure more than two Future Leader Fellowships by UK Research and Innovation. With award-winning projects spanning across oceanography, neuroscience and an interdisciplinary collaboration of heritage, archaeology, ecology and culture, we continue to inspire creativity and bring people together. 
 
Discover our award-winning researchers here.

We are committed to bringing experts together to solve the challenges of today and tomorrow. Our researchers from the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences have been recognised for their international impact by receiving the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize, awarded by the Leverhulme Trust. This highly competitive and coveted award honours the next generation of researchers whose future career is exceptionally promising, with each prize being worth £100,000. This significant achievement demonstrates the global impact of our pioneering and innovative research. 

Learn about our celebrated experts here.

Research across nine of our academic areas has been ranked among the world’s top 100 in the 2024 Global Rankings of Academic Subjects. Compiled by Shanghai Rankings, the results highlight our global research excellence, with nine subjects placing in the top 100 and eleven more in the top 200. Leading the way, our Ecology department is ranked fourth globally, with Earth Sciences, Geography, and Atmospheric Science placing highly. We also achieved national top rankings, including first place in Environment Science and Engineering, reflecting our commitment to world-class research, collaboration, and impact.

Find out more about our research.

We have partnered with Google Arts and Culture alongside Universidad Nacional de Colombia and Universidad de Antioquia, to create a series of immersive stories capturing some of the remarkable findings of an Amazonia-based archaeology project. LASTJOURNEY, explores the human adaptations and impact of the first settlers to arrive in the Colombian Amazon more than 12,000 years ago. Through 360-degree images, digitised 3D models, videos, and illustrations, numerous sites of stunning indigenous rock art were documented. These include depictions of extinct Ice Age mammals and other indigenous species, as well as images of transformation and shamanism, providing an insight into the worldview and cosmology of the early settlers.

Find out more about LASTJOURNEY and the Google Arts and Culture La Lindosa project.

We are dedicated to the principle of research excellence that is underpinned by an open and supportive research culture and environment, which recognises the contributions of all our colleagues and researchers. In September 2024 we launched our new Discovery interface, which transformed how we showcase the expertise and achievements of our colleagues. Profiles are standardized and easy to search by both name and research topic, allowing us to connect with external audiences and partners. This promotes transdisciplinary collaboration and encourages both prospective students and partners to connect with us.

Connect with our community through Discovery.

We believe in interdisciplinary research that crosses boundaries and we are committed to enhancing and supporting this way of working to enable us to tackle societal challenges on a  local, national and global level. As part of this commitment, we have created two new research networks. Exeter Defence, Security, and Resilience unites over 200 of our academics, focusing on cutting-edge defence and security research. Heritage@Exeter is a diverse transdisciplinary community of over 100 researchers exploring heritage (cultural, natural, tangible, intangible) to understand and transform societal structures, ideologies, health, and environmental impacts.

Find out more about Exeter Defence, Security, and Resilience and Heritage@Exeter

We are committed to ensuring that our technicians and their contributions to higher education and research, are given the recognition they deserve. We are proud to have been awarded a Technician Commitment Impact Award as a result of our Stage 3 self-assessment and action plan submission. The award recognises the progress we have made in ensuring the visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability of technical careers, over the last 3 years. The Technician Commitment is a university and research institution initiative, hosted by the UK Institute of Technical Skills, of which we are a founding signatory.

Find out more about our Technician Commitment

Delivering on our collective and individual research ambitions requires contributions from across our institution, and we need to provide the kind of support which allows all to make their contributions in the best way possible. This includes both academic and professional colleagues, as well as our students, across all stages of their career. Ensuring that our communities are thriving and inclusive is essential and we’ve been looking at the ways we can enhance existing good practices. Through the Research and Impact Executive Committee we’ve been establishing institution-wide resources and support, and in 2021/22 our departments developed research culture action plans. Some of our diverse initiatives which have been supported at an institutional-level have included a Responsible Metrics Champions Group, the development of the Research Culture SharePoint, supporting work on reproducibility, developing training programmes, enabling early career research networks, training for supervisors and researcher-led initiatives.

Supporting and enhancing a vibrant and inclusive research culture needs a whole community to champion policies and processes within our University and across the sector. To support and explore some of the different aspects of research culture, to address systemic issues and promote the small actions we can each do, in 2022-23 we launched the Research Culture SharePoint site. The site covers topics relating to inclusivity, career development and wellbeing, as well as responsible research and issues relating to assessment and recognition. With the aim of inclusivity and transdisciplinary in our research culture, a toolkit to support research culture in grants was created alongside an online Viva Engage Research Culture community which shares good practice in a community forum.

Our new Technical Strategy aims to provide expertise, equipment, facilities and spaces that optimise the power of our education and research, through adaptable and sustainable technical capability and capacity. We will achieve this through developing innovative technical environments which are adaptive to digital and technical growth, as well as providing support for our experts and researchers and future proofed solutions for growth and maintenance of sustainable facilities and equipment. So far, this strategy has provided expert support to over 430 dedicated technical spaces, including laboratories and workshops, and saved at least 100 tonnes CO2 which equates to £90,000 in energy costs each year.

Find out more about Exe-Tech Strategy 2030.

We are building a reputation as a global leader in sustainable futures research and teaching, and to support this we’re investing in our Penryn Campus in Cornwall. Currently in its design phase, a new three-storey facility at the campus will help to grow our research, education and partnership activities, with state-of-the-art laboratories and collaborative spaces. The new building will provide much-needed space for innovation, creativity, learning and discovery, where interdisciplinary research and teaching can make a profound and positive difference to our world, now and for decades to come.

Keep up to date with the project here.

The Centre for Resilience in Environment, Water and Waste (CREWW) undertakes research into some of the most pressing environmental challenges in our time - namely how we can manage our precious natural resources in ways which are sustainable, innovative, and resilient. CREWW is the first Net-Zero-in-Operation research centre to be co-funded and co-created by an institution of higher education in partnership with the water industry. The joint venture between the University of Exeter and South West Water aims to develop a shared understanding between water industry experts, academics, and technical lab staff. Working with a solution-based approach to water research, CREWW projects work alongside the wider environmental sector, government, SMEs, and NGOs to implement impactful interventions and applied research that delivers multiple benefits to our business operations, the environment, society, and the economy.

Find out more about CREWW.

We provide targeted and agile support to innovative research ideas that are 'high risk, high reward', supporting our researchers with their big ideas from inception through to submission. The Complex Initiatives Fund (CIF) has supported a wide variety of strategically aligned successful proposals, including £15m to tackle neurodegeneration, diabetes and genetics through the NIHR Exeter Biomedical Research Centre in partnership with the NHS. CIF support has also enabled success for the ACCESS programme (£6m from ESRC) to increase capacity for climate and environment social sciences, and for the multi-partner RENEW programme (£10m from NERC) to develop solutions to renew biodiversity.

Watch the video to find out more.

In line with our net zero targets, we’re reducing waste and energy consumption in how we undertake research in our laboratories and as a result of this, we became the second institution in the world to achieve 100% Bronze Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) accreditation. Building on this success in November 2023, 49% of our laboratory spaces have now achieved Silver accreditation, showing a dedication to sustainable practices that we will continue in 2024. Through our Sustainable Research Models programme our technicians and researchers are further innovating their practices to improve environmental sustainability in their research environment.

Find out more about laboratory sustainability here.

As a Russell Group university, our research makes a difference across the world. Our interdisciplinary, virtual research networks break down traditional barriers between academic disciplines so the bigger problems of the 21st Century can be considered from both human and physical perspectives. The first Exeter Research Networks were successfully launched in 2022 and are now tackling a wide range of societal challenges by bringing together exceptional academic talent from across the University’s faculties with a range of external partners, to ensure that our research continues to have international impact. Each network embodies a critical mass of people with an interest in that theme or topic, typically more than 100 academic and postgraduate researchers.

Find out more about our research networks