Data-driven insights: maximising the impact of bioscience research

At BBSRC, we're passionate about bioscience, but we're also passionate about data. Harnessing the power of data analytics capabilities within BBSRC to provide strategic and operational insights in our day-to-day work, helps us as an organisation to maximise the overall impact of our research investments.

Over the past 30 years, BBSRC has invested over £7.5 billion in bioscience research. Data relating to these investments is a much-valued asset within BBSRC. By connecting portfolio analysis and data-driven insight with monitoring and evaluation activities, and a coherent articulation of bioscience impacts, BBSRC has catalysed an integrated evidence base. This provides an understanding of whether our research and innovation investments are delivering what we hoped, helping us to continually learn and improve our future investment decisions.

In developing our expertise in data analytics, BBSRC actively shares knowledge and experience with our colleagues across UKRI and beyond. Our own advances have been a collaborative effort, drawing on open-source tools with partners in the UK and internationally.

Here are some of the ways we use data to drive insight:

• text searching, clustering and visualisation: we explore text-rich data like grant summaries and publication abstracts to identify trends and connections.
• auto-classification: we semi-automate the classification of our research portfolio by topic, providing structure for reporting and strategic analysis.
• network analysis: we analyse relationships and connections between researchers, institutions and industry partners to understand collaborations and partnerships.
• interactive dashboards: we create interactive dashboards to enable self-service analytics, empowering our staff and stakeholders to explore data and gain insights.
  
  All of these activities help us to work with our stakeholders and set our research portfolio in broader national and international context. By harnessing the power of data, we're ensuring that our investments in bioscience research continue to deliver maximum benefits for society and the economy.