The University of Oxford is a complex and stimulating organisation, which enjoys an international reputation as a world-class centre of excellence in research and teaching. It employs over 11,000 staff and has a student population of over 22,000. Oxford is one of Europe's most innovative and entrepreneurial universities, with more than 80 spin-off companies having been created. It is also a collegiate university, consisting of the central University and 44 colleges and private halls.

Engineering teaching and research takes place at Oxford in a unified Department of Engineering Science whose academic staff are committed to a common engineering foundation as well as to advanced work in their own specialities, which include most branches of the subject. We have especially strong links with computing, materials science and medicine. The Department employs about 90 academic staff (this number includes 13 statutory Professors appointed in the main branches of the discipline, and 25 other professors in the Department); in addition there are 9 Visiting Professors.

The Department was ranked the top engineering department in the UK, as measured by overall GPA, in the Research Excellence Framework 2014 exercise. It has approximately 350 research students and about 130 Research Fellows and Postdoctoral researchers. Direct funding of research grants and contracts, from a variety of sources, amounts to an annual turnover of approximately £19m in addition to general turnover of about £18m. The research activities of the department fall into seven broad headings, though there is much overlapping in practice: Thermofluids; Materials and Mechanics; Civil and Offshore; Information, Control and Vision; Electrical and Optoelectronic; Chemical and Process; Biomedical Engineering.

University College, Bristol opened in 1876 as the first college in the country to admit men and women on an equal footing. The University's reputation grew steadily where it became known as an institution with formidable academic strengths and an unshakable commitment to quality - characteristics that are just as apparent now. Bristol is in the top 5 research institutions in the UK according to REF2014, and 29th in the World University Rankings in 2014/15. It has a long history of engagement with other world-leading technological innovation in and around the city of Bristol, most recently in the Bristol and Bath Science Park and the Bristol is Open project.

The School of Mathematics has 57 permanent academic staff, 46 postdoctoral staff and 64 PhD students as of spring 2015. It has vibrant and dynamic research groups across the whole spectrum of the mathematical sciences: in Algebra, Analysis, Ergodic Theory & Dynamical Systems, Fluids & Materials, Mathematical Physics, Number Theory & Combinatorics, Probability, Quantum Information, Set Theory & Logic and Statistics, as well as strong links with many other Schools, Faculties, research centres and industrial partners. In REF2014 its ranking in the UK taking into account research intensity was 4th overall and 2nd for impact. Bristol mathematicians have attracted major distinctions, for example five current members of permanent academic staff are Fellows of the Royal Society of whom four were elected or appointed since 2008.