Faced with the Donald Trump administration’s attack on research, UK scientific institutions are strengthening investment programs and opening up formal funding guarantees and scholarships to experts fleeing the United States for 10 years.
The initiatives announced by the UK government, the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering will promote efforts of international talent and provide additional financial stability for long-term projects in fast-dive fields such as quantum computing and bacterial resistance.
These measures constitute an effort to prevent British science from opposing sudden funding cuts and ideological suppression of what the United States sees.
"International science is in a changing state, and some certainty in the post-war era is being questioned," said Sir Adrian Smith, Dean of the Royal Society of the National Academy of Sciences. "With the flow of funds and academic freedoms threatened, the best scientific talents will seek stability. Britain can be ahead of the queue in attracting such talents."
The Royal Society will announce a new Faraday scholarship for international researchers, up to £30 million. The money will be used to award individual scientists or teams of people in special cases up to £4 million or more to individual scientists or teams for five to 10 years.
Two-thirds of the £30 million will come from the association's existing government-funded scheme, designed to attract mid-term researchers interested in moving to the UK. The rest will be new funds for the society itself and will focus on scientists at other career stages.
Meanwhile, the Royal Academy of Engineering will launch an accelerated avenue to make it easier for “stellar international researchers and inventors to work in the UK”.
This will provide more than £3 million applicants within a successful 10 years to develop and expand breakthrough climate solutions as part of the college’s existing £150 million Green Future Scholarship Program.
The plan adds to the £54 million plan announced by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Technology this month. The money will pay for relocation costs and project funds for about 10 researchers in government-priority fields, such as life sciences, artificial intelligence and green energy.
The initiative is welcomed by scientific institutions, although many are also concerned about the potential deterrence of high visa costs on broader efforts in international recruitment.
The departments will launch a program separately to provide a decade of funding guarantee for researchers in the border area.
The extended financing is designed to make institutions more certain to recruit and collaborate internationally, build the required infrastructure and establish partnerships with the private sector.
Patrick Vallance, science minister and former chief scientific adviser for the government, said the 10-year grant of £20.4 billion in annual research and development (R&D) spending is about £20 billion.
Valens said he believed that investment in science and technology was "a state effort, not a political effort of a party," although he acknowledged that any future government could theoretically reverse changes in capital.
It has tried to impose significant cuts on science funding since the Trump administration took office in January. It also ordered the cancellation of research efforts in areas including diversity, vaccines and climate change.
In the UK, Nigel Farage's Rever, the Rever, led the labour in polls and won hundreds of seats in local elections this month, attacked official policies of net zero carbon emissions and diversity, equity and inclusion. It also promised to "cut government waste."
Vallance acknowledges that there is “always risk” that establishing long-term research funding flows can be cancelled by future governments and adopting radical scientific policy approaches. The minister, who was once the president of research and development of a pharmaceutical company GSK, said he would "continue to work hard" on his long-term view of investment.
"Chopping and changing in R&D is a very bad way to make progress," he said. "You're damaging things."