The Research Councils invest £3bn of public funding in excellent research to bring about positive impact in our society and economy.

This occurs in many ways – through knowledge exchange, new products and processes, new companies and job creation, skills development, increasing the effectiveness of public services and policy, enhancing quality of life and health, international development and so on.

Our primary criterion is research excellence. RCUK introduced Pathways to Impact to encourage you to think about what can be done to ensure your research makes a difference. Through Pathways to Impact we want to encourage you to explore, from the outset and throughout the life of your project and beyond, who could potentially benefit from your research and what you can do to help make this happen.