Last one shows UK corporate spending holds up in recession. The government will no longer produce its annual R&D Scoreboard, which analyses R&D spending among the top 1,000 UK and top 1,000 global corporate investors in R&D. The latest edition, which analyses corporate R&D spending in 2009, will be the last. “While this useful tool […]
Research Fortnight
Is industry walking away from academia?
Recession-hit companies scale back university liaison offices. Universities could find it more difficult to find industry research partners as hi-tech companies look to scale back or close their academic liaison departments in the wake of the financial crisis. The defence technology company QinetiQ, spun out of the government’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 2001, […]
LibDem grassroots wait and see on science
Liberal Democrat activists at the party’s conference in Liverpool have adopted a ‘wait and see’ attitude to the coalition’s science policy. “I think the jury’s still out,” Ken Cosslett, chairman of the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists told Research Fortnight. “But we will definitely be discussing it at our AGM on Wednesday.” After […]
Steady on, Damian!
Immigration minister Damian Green wants to crack down on foreign students who stay in the UK after graduating. Research Fortnight news editor Brian Owens wonders if that means him. A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to find myself a subject of discussion on the BBC’s Today programme on Radio 4. Well, not me […]
Small charities bring opportunities to neglected fields of research
Twenty years ago, Nick Lemoine was the only researcher in the UK dedicated to pancreatic cancer. “I’m pretty sure Walter Bodmer, the head of the Imperial Cancer Reseach Fund, thought I was working on prostate cancer, because it started with a ‘P’,” he says. “I didn’t disabuse him of that, it was just easier that […]
Don’t panic
The speedy insertion of impact assessment into the plans for the Research Excellence Framework last month has alarmed academics. To grade work not just on its scholarly merits but on how useful it is, economically and socially, is anathema to many researchers. But the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s plans are not as bad […]