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Research Partnerships Report 2025

By supporting partnerships at every stage, we help innovation flourish. This report showcases how we deliver innovation at scale - improving health, driving economic growth, and shaping a smarter, fairer and more prosperous future.

Read our case studies Download the full report

Driving innovation and collaboration for global impact

At the University of Liverpool, innovation happens best in partnership – it’s at the heart of everything we do. By collaborating with industry, government, the third sector, and our communities, we turn bold ideas into real-world impact.

Professor Tim Jones, Vice-Chancellor of University of Liverpool standing infront of the Victoria Gallery & Museum

Foreword by Professor Tim Jones, Vice-Chancellor

Much of our work aligns with the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy, and we work hard to tackle national and regional challenges. We are rooted in Liverpool, but our impact reaches across the globe. In May 2025, we announced the launch of our first international campus in Bengaluru, representing a major chapter in UK–India educational collaboration.

By supporting partnerships at every stage, we help innovation flourish. Our consistently sector-leading performance in Research England’s Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) demonstrates our excellence in partnerships across business, public, and third sector organisations, placing us among the top universities in the country.

We contribute to the Liverpool City Region Innovation Zone, encompassing the Freeport and the Government’s national Life Sciences Investment Zone programme - strengthening the regional innovation ecosystem across sectors, from advanced materials and life sciences to creative industries.

Our partnerships span local, national, and global scales: the Charter with Roche Diagnostics unites over 20 regional partners to tackle health challenges, while our longstanding partnership with Unilever stands as one of the most successful university-industry collaborations in the world, making Liverpool a global centre for materials innovation.

But we want to go further and faster, together. Our £550 million Health Innovation Liverpool Campus (HIL) will integrate research, patient care, industry, and training to drive cutting-edge research and innovation into real-world health solutions. Building on the success of the Materials Innovation Factory and its internationally recognised expertise, we have launched plans for the AI Materials Hub for Innovation (AIM-HI). This £100 million, AI-driven materials innovation project will form part of a new £111 million, purpose-built chemical sciences facility in Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter, set to open in 2031.

From Liverpool to the world. The future is ours to shape.

Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region

"The University of Liverpool is not only one of our region’s greatest assets, it’s also a world-class institution that’s helping to put the Liverpool City Region at the vanguard of global innovation.

Its partnerships with industry, communities and the public sector show what can be achieved when research excellence meets real-world ambition – creating good jobs, tackling the climate crisis, and improving lives across our region.

Together, we’re building the skills, partnerships and investment needed to make the Liverpool City Region a genuine innovation powerhouse – and to reach our shared ambition of raising R&D investment to 5% of GVA by 2030."

Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region

Read the full 2025 Reseach Partnership Report here (PDF, 6.0 MB)