S&T - New Horizons: The UK’s Global Science Strategy Beyond Horizon Europe (Jan 2023)

Comments at the UK Onward event on UK Science Strategy

In January I spoke at a panel event by UK Onward, a leading UK Think Tank that has an interest in science and technology. It was about Horizon Europe and the future trajectory of UK Science and Technology, as a follow up panel after the Science Minister’s speech there. The panel was Oxford Regius Professor of Medicine Sir John Bell, AI Council Chair Tabitha Goldstaub, myself, UKRI NED and Venture Capitalist Priya Guha, Manchester VP and Professor Richard Jones, and former Science Minister Lord Willetts.

The full transcript have been published in a paper - click here to read them all.

Sir John Bell’s opening remark that ‘for the UK to become a science superpower is not actually optional, if we don’t become a science superpower we will be in all kinds of trouble, because this is probably the only way for us to generate the productivity and economic growth to remain a leading country in the world.’ was spot on. I strongly agree with this assessment.

We were asked to make a focussed point in each of our 5 minute opening remarks. In my remarks, the core point that I tried to convey is that the institutions and processes of supporting science in the UK require major reform alongside investment increase to get us back to the cutting edge of science and technology, and that we should be creating new institutions of science focussed on empowering junior researchers as a central part of this. 

Here are my remarks from the publication, lightly edited from my panel comments:

The institutions of science have not kept pace with the changes in how science and technology has been operating over the last 30 years. We need to create new kinds of institutions and funding approaches adapted to this, and that are particularly attractive to global junior talent.

Three major things which come to mind when thinking about the next decade in UK science and technology in the context of our global position and Horizon Europe.

First is the need to benchmark the UK against the very best science and technology ecosystems in the world, both in terms of investment and performance. The UK has had decades of underinvestment in science and technology. We still are under investing. We shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking this hasn’t had negative consequences, or be satisfied with being near the top of the group in Europe. Places like the Bay Area and Boston for example are significantly ahead in cutting edge areas like synthetic biology, AI, and quantum. Europe is lagging behind, including the United Kingdom. There are major first mover advantages in science and technology, from talent attraction to patents. Being at the cutting edge matters.

Second is the dramatic change, over the last two decades, in how science and technology works. Science now is much more interdisciplinary, much more multi- modal. Any given paper in synthetic biology from the Broad Institute could have: molecular biology advances, synthetic biology advances, robotics advances, material science advances, artificial intelligence advances, all being brought to bear on a problem. That approach to science is challenging to adopt in a conventional academic department, on conventional academic grants. Yet there has not been a cultural shift in science towards a team based approach, or to the close integration of discovery science and engineering. It is often no longer possible for an individual researcher to fully know how to do every technique in a paper or product , there are simply too many skills required. The institutions supporting scientific research have not adjusted to this.

Third, from a strategic perspective we need to think not only about what we are weak at, but what other countries are weak at. We need to identify which niches we could exploit. For example, the terrible situation for junior scientists globally. There is an enormous pool of talented people around the world for whom the existing scientific structures do not work. Nowadays, at the age when the likes of Marie Curie, Lovelace, Francis Crick, Newton, and Einstein were doing their best work; young researchers are working in someone else’s lab on short term contracts, often doing work for people who may not have touched a test tube themselves in 20 years. While this was an eccentric view five years ago, we are now seeing the increasing despondency amongst junior scientists recognised in major journals like Nature. These junior researchers are an amazing resource. We should be creating institutions to attract them, offering an alternative to their current servitude.

So what does this look like in terms of what we should be investing in?

Alongside the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), we should create a network of what Rob Miller and Eoin O’Sullivan call the creation of ‘Disruptive Innovation Labs’, which is similar to ideas proposed by Number 10 (link). These would be environments at the intersection between science and engineering. For example, you might have an organisation focusing on understanding and healing the brain-body connection through new technology, or in a particular area of synthetic biology, not structured like an academic department, but structured more like an organisation such as DeepMind, bringing together a diverse set of skills to work on a common broad vision or mission.

There's a tremendous amount of attention on what Google DeepMind is doing and the transformative impact it is having. Yet there is almost no attention paid to the fact that DeepMind is organised very differently to conventional academic departments, or to most of the organisations which are funded through public R&D. And likewise, if we go back to the origins of molecular biology, of telecommunications, of personal computing, organisations like the early LMB, like Xerox PARC, like Bell Labs can be found, which looked very different to conventional academia and are much more oriented to bringing together discovery science, invention and application under one roof.

If we made institutions centred on those principles, they would be a major pull for global talent and get us back to the front of the technological race.