Brexit has made it difficult to build bridges between British and EU scientists, leaving Horizon Europe, the EU’s giant innovation funding arm, with a 95.5 billion euro ($104.5 billion) coffer. British access was also cut off. Scientists say the world will be better for the UK this month when it returns as an “associate member” of Horizon Europe.
For many years, the UK has been a second destination for scientists pursuing research. But “it’s been really damaged by Brexit and the perception that we’re disconnected from the rest of the world,” says Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
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Britain is back in Europe! Now, Horizon Europe, the European Union’s research and innovation program. New collaboration between UK and EU scientists is restoring opportunities that were hampered by Brexit.
Brexit has left the UK behind both China and the US. “It’s really anathema to the research ethos. Politicians need to realize it’s not helping Britain,” Dr Ward says.
“This is a club, a gang that every British person should be a part of,” says Adrian Smith, president of Britain’s independent scientific academy, the Royal Society. “The honor of being involved with something like a European Research Council Fellowship and being judged by a huge expert group of 30,000 researchers from 30 countries, as opposed to the alternative of going it alone… It’s something you can’t do.”
British zero-emissions truck manufacturer Tevva isn’t just trying to develop an alternative to diesel transport vehicles. It also functions as a stage for European research.
At least in a sense. As part of a project hosted by Horizon Europe, the European Union’s huge scientific research and innovation programme, Teva is working with scientists and businesses in both the UK and EU to develop the next generation of electric trucks.
“And they’ve set very aggressive goals with challenging range and efficiency targets,” says Stuart Cottrell, head of energy services and government partnerships at Tevva.
Why I wrote this
a story focused on
Britain is back in Europe! Now, Horizon Europe, the European Union’s research and innovation program. New collaboration between UK and EU scientists is restoring opportunities that were hampered by Brexit.
By being able to tap into the capabilities of partners in countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and Greece, Tevva is able to increase efficiency, meaning it can transport more cargo over longer distances using less energy. I was able to understand something. Tevva uses zero-emission trucks as a laboratory to help manufacturers demonstrate their capabilities.
“It’s like a two-way street. We’re developing products, and some companies are developing tools,” Cottrell says. What is clear is that together they are pushing the limits. “We could not have built such a rich consortium in the UK alone,” he says.
Britain’s exit from the European Union has created tensions in the bridge between British and EU scientists, with Horizon, the EU’s giant innovation funding arm and coffers of 95.5 billion euros ($104.5 billion) British access to Europe was cut off. This month, after years of negotiations, the UK will return to being an “associate member” of Horizon Europe, making the world a better place for Britain, scientists say.
Today’s most pressing problems require the best trained scientific thinking, and such talent is rarely contained within a country’s borders, says the Royal Society, Britain’s independent academy of science. Adrian Smith, chairman of
“Even if you just take simple issues like pandemics, climate change and net zero, all of these require massive international cooperation. It’s not just about ideas, it’s fundamentally about people,” Smith said. says the doctor. “The whole point of Brexit was for the UK to go it alone and do its own thing, but top-level science is one of the areas where international cooperation is absolutely essential and we can go it alone and become a scientific power. It is not possible.”
Brexit brain drain
The UK has long been the number two destination for scientists pursuing research, according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. But “it’s been really damaged by Brexit and the perception that we’re disconnected from the rest of the world,” said David, director of policy at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Bob Ward says. “It’s not just in terms of funding and visa barriers, but also the idea that the UK is hostile to working with other countries in any way.”
Brexit has left the UK behind both China and the US. “It’s really anathema to the research ethos. Politicians need to realize it’s not helping Britain,” Dr Ward says.
The statistics are clear. The UK needs Horizon Europe, which has been part of the UK’s scientific framework for decades. Collaboration produces results. More than a third of his major UK research papers are co-authored with European partners. Conversely, EU programs are cited three times more compared to member states alone.
“This is a club, a gang that every British person has to be a part of. We are not America. We are not America. We are not China,” the Royal Society’s Dr Smith says of Horizon Europe. “The honor of being involved with something like a European Research Council Fellowship and being judged by a huge expert group of 30,000 researchers from 30 countries, as opposed to the alternative of going it alone.” .It’s completely unthinkable.”
After Brexit, the UK government took on the project until it was able to partner with Horizon Europe again, Dr Smith said. However, this did not prevent the exodus of scientists to the EU and the US. Look at people who received European Research Council grants that required EU residency, he says.
“These are the brightest and best.” [scientists]these are very prestigious awards and approximately one in six [pulled up stakes] I moved from the UK to the EU,” says Dr Smith. “This was very damaging in terms of losing influence with people, but it was also damaging to collaboration and the whole mood music around it. Afterwards, many researchers in the UK We found it very difficult to recruit postdoctoral researchers.”
The EU also needs British brains and institutions. EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Iliana Ivanova said in a statement that bringing them back into the EU is “a real milestone, for both sides and for the advancement of science in the world.” It’s a clear win-win for us.” She said: “Together we can go further and faster.”
“The best science is international science”
Perhaps the clearest example of how science requires international cooperation is astronomy and related fields.
Astrophysicist David Armstrong is working on Horizon Europe, a project the UK has urgently stepped in to provide post-Brexit funding to discover Neptune-sized planets in extremely close orbits around other stars. – Executing the project. It requires a $1.5 billion telescope facility, clear skies in the Southern Hemisphere, and scientific brains across the continent.
“Everything is fundamentally international,” says Dr Armstrong, a professor at the University of Warwick. “That’s how it should be.”
They use a giant telescope observatory in the Chilean desert, leveraging Portugal’s expertise in stellar parameters, Swiss spectrometer scientists, and other teams in Argentina, the United States, and Australia.
How did this field evolve and become so globally intertwined? First, telescopes are expensive, and no country would want to shoulder their huge budgets alone, Armstrong said. explain.
“So we say, if we’re going to build this great facility, we need to put it in the best possible location, and usually the best possible location is in some country. There’s a feeling that if we’re going to do all of this, we’re going to need the best science possible. If you need different skills, the best fit can often be found elsewhere. ”
“The best science is international science,” says Dr. Ward, head of policy at the London School of Economics.
“We’re back in the realm of collaboration.”
Zero-emission vehicles, tidal energy and DNA sequencing technology are all supported by the Horizon Europe project. Scientists are also working to restore ocean health and develop climate-neutral cities.
“If you look at all the impacts of science and its applications, some of them major ones that require huge investments and massive cooperation, many of which originally came out of EU projects.” says Dr. Smith.
Collaborations can also fund science that might not otherwise be addressed, or that might be addressed soon.
Without that, the world might have had to wait a little longer for hydrogen-electric trucks, says Cottrell, director of partnerships at Tevva. A large company like Volvo may have an army of researchers in-house, but they may not prioritize such ambitious technology among their legacy products, shareholders, and profit margins.
“Their appetites and paces are completely different,” Cottrell said. “We don’t feel burdened by any of that, but at the same time we don’t have the scale to do all of this on our own.”
And now that the UK has returned to Horizon Europe, some hope that other corridors to the EU blocked by Brexit may be reopened.
“We keep hearing signals that people want to start talking about other collaborations,” says Dr. Smith of the Royal Society. “Instead of a terrible confrontation, we are back in the realm of cooperation.”