NewsByte

For better or for worse, Brexit is finally happening. The UK will leave the EU on Friday at midnight CET, with details on the future cooperation in research and innovation still to be decided.

To mark the event, Science|Business has put together a showcase of the strengths and some of the weaker points of UK’s research and innovation system, which also highlights the importance of scientific cooperation between EU and the soon-to-be non-member state.

1: The UK has eight of the world’s 100 best universities

The number of renewable energy patents filed worldwide jumped 28 per cent to 20,905 in 2018/19, up from 16,287 the previous year, according to UK commercial law firm EMW.

UK venture capital investment in tech companies surpassed $13 billion in 2019, outperforming Germany and France combined. According to data analysed by Tech Nation, venture capital going into tech companies based in the UK accounted for one third of total investment in Europe in 2019.

In a new study, an international team led by researchers from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, found 134 of a total of 169 individual targets in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals could benefit from the advent of artificial intelligence (AI).

The remaining 59 goals would not benefit from AI. Overall, AI has the potential to have a positive impact on 79 percent of goals.

The country is trying new things and seeking a deeper partnership with Europe to boost its faltering global research profile and keep ahead of Asian rivals

Japan is making changes to how it funds and manages research amid growing concern about the country’s sliding status in science.

An increase in spending announced by prime minister Shinzo Abe in late 2019 includes significant funds for young scientific researchers and mission-oriented ‘moonshot’ research projects. The stimulus package is an implicit acknowledgment that the world's third-largest economy needs fresh momentum, and new ways to build science expertise and attract talent.

Research published by London-based venture capital firm Atomico shows the UK is Europe's leading destination for investors in advanced digital technologies, attracting $2.9 billion in 2019 and a total of nearly $10 billion since 2015. In 2019, companies in France and Germany attracted a combined $2 billion.

With only a handful of exceptions, capital cities and their regions are the most competitive and innovative in the EU.

In 2018 R&D investment in the EU increased from 2.07 to 2.11 per cent of GDP, according to the latest Eurostat data.

Preventable mortality rates are about twice the EU average in Lithuania, Latvia and Hungary, according to the European Commission ‘State of Health in the EU 2019’ report published today.

In these countries, preventable deaths are mainly caused by vaccine-preventable diseases and diseases associated with unhealthy lifestyle choices.

In a country where petrochemicals are king, the government is making a studied effort to send the economy off in more sustainable, long-term directions. 

Norway accounts for around 1.5 per cent of overall European Research Council applications, placing it in the top quarter of applicant countries (of a similar size).

The overall success rate of Norwegian applications to the EU funder has been just over 8 per cent, compared with an all-country average of over 11 per cent.

According to the latest data from the World Intellectual Property Organisation, China’s patent office received 1.5 million patent applications in 2018, representing 46.4 per cent of all patent applications filed worldwide.

China’s share of the world total increased from 15 per cent in 2008, recording year-on-year growth for the past 23 years.

A new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows public R&D expenditure in the energy sector has shifted from fossil fuels and nuclear to renewables, energy efficiency and cross-cutting research and technologies. Such green R&D now makes up 61 per cent of total energy R&D spending in advanced economies, compared to only 25 per cent in 1990.

Of the 13 member states that joined the EU after 2004 (EU13), Hungary and Poland lead in the number of applications for the pilot programme of the European Innovation Council (EIC) that is expected to be fully launched in 2021 with a total budget of €10 billion. 

A survey of the founders of start-up companies in Europe shows countries in central and eastern Europe lose more entrepreneurs than they gain.

According to the ‘Startup Heatmap’ published today, about 16 per cent of start-up founders in central and eastern Europe chose to move to western Europe, while 18 per cent leave the Mediterranean region.

The Spanish government has mapped a total of 154 public and private institutions doing research and working in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in the country. According to government data, AI-intensive organisations with more than 200 employees are located in Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao, the capital of Basque Country.

Regions labelled by the European Commission as ‘innovation leaders’ have significantly more high-paid jobs than regions that are moderate performers, according to a new report by the commission’s Joint Research Centre.

In 2016, almost half of Europe’s total gross domestic expenditure on R&D took place in just 27 of the 266 regions, according to Eurostat’s 2019 regional yearbook.

In addition, only 11 regions, five of which are in Germany, reported R&D expenditures higher than four per cent of GDP.

Researchers in EU’s first 15 member states appear to have reduced their collaborations with poorer, EU-13 member states during the seventh research framework programme (FP7).

However, the latest data analysed by Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Ron Boschma and Julien Ravet in the Journal of European Planning Studies shows researchers in EU-15 member states have substantially increased the number of projects with EU-13 partners in Horizon 2020.

Switzerland is Europe’s most “inventive” country, according to 2018 patenting data published by the European Patent Office (EPO). For every million inhabitants in the country, Swiss innovators filed nearly 1,000 patent applications.