The University of Liverpool is a founding member of the prestigious Russell Group, comprising of the leading 24 research intensive universities in the UK. The university has 24,775 students and an expenditure of £521.8M (2016-17). The research quality of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics in the national Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 was judged as being 90% world leading or internationally excellent. The Technological Plasma Group at ULIV is one of the leading plasma groups in the world, working on low temperature plasmas and their applications in pollution control, energy conversion, sterilization/decontamination and materials processing.