More public money pours into UK science

Money for new projects is being complimented by new tax breaks on patents, R&D expenditure, and capital gains from venture capital investments in high tech start-ups.

Meanwhile, the Technology Strategy Board is busy disbursing funds from the £1 billion Strategic Investment Fund, set up to head off the worst effects of the recession, and which must all be spent by April 2011.

At the same time, the £1 billion Innovation Investment Fund is ramping up operations and preparing to start investing in technology start-ups.

It seems inevitable that cuts are on the way after the General Election (expected to be on 6 May), as moves are made to pay back debts built up during the banking crisis. But before the hangover, the scientific establishment can bask in the glow of thirteen years of rising spending that has seen the UK’s public science budget double to £6 billion per annum.

Among recent announcements:

• £97.4 million to the Science and Technology Facilities Council Phase III of the Diamond Synchrotron at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. Together with a £13.8 million contribution from the research charity the Wellcome Trust, this will fund the addition of 10 more beamlines to the facility, eventually bringing the total to 32. The new beamlines will extend Diamond’s reach into novels aspects of industrial processing, engineering materials, forensics, environmental and medical science, archaeology, cultural heritage and food science;

• the government confirmed a £250 million investment in 2010/11 for a new UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation at St Pancras in London, bringing together research teams from Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, University College London and the Medical Research Council, and working closely with the National Health Service;

• the establishment of the Newton Scholarships to help attract and retain top research talent, which will provide support for around 100 doctoral students from around the world each year. The Scholarships will have funding of £2.5million per annum;

• £48 million for the Natural Environment Research Council to build a new Discovery research ship;

• £30 million for the creation of an Institute for Web Science to carry out research into next generation, Web 3.0 technologies and support their commercialisation. The Institute, to be hosted by Oxford and Southampton universities, will be headed by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Its brief will run from conducting research, to collaborating with industry, identifying opportunities for social and economic applications and assisting in commercialising research;

• £40 million for an International Space Innovation Centre, to sit alongside a new UK Space Agency;

• the formation of a network of technology and innovation centres modelled on Germany’s Fraunhofer Institutes, to help commercialise research. The centres will be based on the recommendations of a report by technology entrepreneur Hermann Hauser, who was commissioned by the government to conduct a review into how the UK could learn from other countries’ innovation networks.

The centres will specialise in potential high growth sectors such as stem cells and regenerative medicine; future internet technologies; plastic electronics; software and technologies addressing renewable energy and climate change; satellite communications; fuel cells; advanced manufacturing; and composite materials.

The Technology Strategy Board is to work with industry and bodies including the Research Councils, Regional Development Agencies and Devolved Administrations on how to implement the recommendations in the Hauser review.