University academics secured a record £170m in new grants last year.

Funding during the last financial year represents a 25% increase on the previous year and is an endorsement of the University’s international reputation for research.

Engineering alone more than doubled the grants received, increasing by 118%. Medicine and Health Sciences brought in 38% more funding. Science (15%), Arts (9%) and Social Sciences (17%) also won significant increases.

Grants from Research Councils are up 87%; EU funding has gone up by 25%, Government by 112% and funding from industry by 21.1%.

Professor Saul Tendler, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, said: “These latest figures are excellent news and are a true reflection of the outstanding and world-changing research that is taking place at the University.”

Professor David Greenaway, Vice-Chancellor, said: “The outcome represents a huge vote of confidence in our researchers on the part of the key funders of research. The new awards will support a range of exciting and potentially transformational projects.”

Significant individual grants gained this year by Nottingham researchers include:

Engineering: the new £18m EPSRC National Centre of Excellence for Power Electronics is coordinated at Nottingham. Led by Professor Mark Johnson, it involves universities of Manchester, Newcastle, Cambridge, Greenwich, Bristol, Sheffield, Strathclyde, Warwick and Imperial College London. The centre is working with industry to take innovation to the marketplace.

Medicine and Health Sciences: the new £3m MRC-Arthritis UK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research is a partnership with the University of Birmingham. It is one of two new centres to be funded by the Medical Research Council and Arthritis Research UK.

Science: the new Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Food will be led by the School of Biosciences with £4.5m funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The centre will tackle the key 21st-century challenges of sustainable food production and novel medical devices to improve healthcare.

Social Sciences: the ESRC Network for Integrated Behavioural Science (NIBS) is a partnership between the Universities of Nottingham, Warwick and East Anglia. It will test cross-disciplinary models of human behaviour and behavioural change, and so inform public policy. The Network is funded with £4m until December 2016 by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Arts: success under the Cross-Council Connected Communities Programme has secured funding for collaborative research with community groups, museums, libraries and archives to explore the region’s heritage, such as trade on the River Trent and green spaces in Nottingham. These projects were included in a national showcase of Connected Communities projects run by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in March.