Beyond the Horizon

The long goodbye

With the UK due to leave the European Union on 31 January 2020, what’s ahead for international research funding for UK researchers? 

About Turn on Adrian Smith Job

After all the speculation and concern over Adrian Smith's job cut at BIS, it's been announced this week that he is going to be appointed to the new, combined role, rather than drafting in a career civil servant. Smith will become Director General of Knowledge and Innovation in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
So sighs of relief all round, though Research Fortnight has noted that Smith has taken over, in his combined role, from Stephen Marston, who was Director General for Universities and Skills. It still remains to be seen, then, what happens in the light of Browne's recommendations over student fees.
Incidentally, is it just me or is there a touch of the former Dr Who Jon Pertwee about the new Director General?

Night of the Long Knife

Research Fortnight has reported that Adrian Smith, Director General of Science and Research at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (that's DGSR at BIS) for the last two years, is for the chop.

Now stiffle that yawn and pay attention at the back. This is more important than it sounds. See, the DGSR is the person responsible for the Research Councils at BIS. If he's to be replaced by a career civil servant - which looks likely at the moment - research might lose its strong voice.

The cutting of the DGSR is part of a bigger shake up of BIS. Science, research, universities and space will now all be bundled together in the somewhat gnomic and Orwellian 'Knowledge and Innovation'. Surely that's doubleplusgood?

Not so. The Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington, considered the decision 'deeply regrettable'. His predecessor Robert May went further, calling it 'substantially both stupid and ignorant and it is politically foolish..If [the head of the new section] is a successful civil servant they are very unlikely to know much about science.'

Let's hope the career civil servant is sympathetic to science - or wears a hard hat.

The End of Dual Support?

The Dept of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is canvassing six bodies on how it should spend the science budget when the current Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) period comes to an end after 2010-11. For the first time the two 'arms' of the Dual Support Mechanism will be considered together. The two arms are:

• quality related (QR) funding, which depends for its distribution on the outcome of the RAE/REF (how many acronyms can I get into one post??),


• project funding, which is distributed by the Research Councils.

Does this signal the end of Dual Support? Some are saying so. However, Prof Adrian Smith ,who is leading the review, is keeping an open mind. Quoted in the Times Higher, he said his aim was 'to get the very best advice and to be as aware, alert and well informed as possible. It is not exciting, but it is a sensible approach.'