Hansard

I, too, congratulate my colleague Jim Eadie on securing the debate and ensuring that the University of Edinburgh is in no doubt about our support and our gratitude for what it has achieved in being ranked 17th in the world in the 2013-14 QS World University Rankings, which makes it the only Scottish university in the world’s top 20, where it competes alongside top universities in the States, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in Boston, as well as the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

As a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, I am immensely proud of what a huge achievement that is for the university, and it is a credit to the dedication, commitment and hard work of all the staff, students and researchers. Particular thanks should be given to the university’s principal, Professor Sir Timothy O’Shea, for his efforts in positioning the university as a leading global institution, which assures it—and, of course Scotland as a whole—of an international platform and allows it to attract world-class researchers through the Scottish Government’s global excellence initiative. In addition, his determination to widen access through programmes such as LEAPS—Lothian equal access programme for schools—ensures that students from schools and communities with no tradition of sending young people to the university now have the opportunity to attend one of the world’s leading universities.

Its being ranked among the world’s top 20 universities testifies to the university’s growing international reputation and its recognition in key research areas, including the life sciences, digital health and care, and renewable energy. The global impact of the university’s research excellence in those areas is reflected by its considerable success in winning millions of pounds from national and international research competitions—not least from successive EU framework programmes. Through its participation in 325 FP7 projects to date, Edinburgh is consistently in the EU’s top 10 and the UK’s top five higher education institutions in terms of the number of participations in framework programme projects. It is the top university in Scotland in that regard.

That tradition of international excellence in research is set to continue into the future. The University of Edinburgh is currently leading an international consortium bid to establish a European Institute of Innovation and Technology knowledge and innovation community—KIC—on healthy living and active ageing, which if successful will be financed from the new EU horizon 2020 funding programme.

LifeKIC, as the Scotland-led KIC is called, will focus on developing new digital health technology through telehealth and telecare initiatives that will, when implemented, allow EU citizens to lead healthy, active and independent lives as they age, as well as through new models of health and social care integration. The first call for new KIC proposals is scheduled for early next year. Through professors Mark Parsons and Stuart Anderson, the university—with the support of Professor George Crooks, who is the medical director of NHS 24, the new digital health institute that is based at the university, along with others such as Scotland Europa, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government—has been working tirelessly to build a team Scotland approach and to bring in other partners in Denmark, Spain, Italy and Germany to act as co-location nodes within lifeKIC.

If successful, the Scotland/UK part of lifeKIC will be hosted in Edinburgh and the overall KIC will be headquartered there. That will enable the university to participate as an innovation hub and to act as a centre of excellence that integrates higher education, research and business activities. As lifeKIC is the only Scotland/UK-led KIC bid, I ask the cabinet secretary to liaise with the UK Government Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts, to ensure that the UK Government supports the taking forward of the bid in Brussels.

By any metric, the University of Edinburgh is one of the world’s premier research and teaching universities. That it has achieved such a status testifies to the hard work and abilities of the staff, the energy of the students and the leadership of the principal. Scotland enjoys an enviable reputation as one of the world’s great centres of research and learning—a reputation that the University of Edinburgh’s successes ensure will continue.

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