May 15, 2012

expert reaction to researchers’ protest over EPSRC funding

Protestors from a new lobby group, Science for the Future, staged a mock funeral outside Parliament and Downing Street for the ‘death of British science’. The protest was a response to the funding policy of the government agency the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Prof Sir William Wakeham, Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“The Royal Academy of Engineering has been a consistent proponent of the need to ensure that research areas of relative strength receive adequate support as well as a better connection to a clear industrial strategy. The funding portfolio must recognise the full spectrum of research endeavours from long-term, curiosity-driven research to that with a more immediate and identified market. What EPSRC has implemented is consistent with that view.

“The Academy welcomes the government’s current interest in developing a proper industrial strategy for the UK, to capitalise on our strongest areas of technology development, and an appropriate balanced research strategy is an important component of this. Over the next decade the UK must rebalance its economy away from financial services and towards a high-technology based manufacturing sector. In order to achieve this, the science and engineering research budget needs to be adjusted to where it can create maximum return to the country within the foreseeable future.”