After London withdrew from the European scientific project
Scientists and researchers in Britain face difficult choices
Researchers in Britain were affected by the conflict between London and Brussels.
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The European Commission has set conditions for funding scientific projects.
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Scientists in Britain face difficult choices about the future of their world-leading research projects, as the United Kingdom comes close to leaving the European Union's massive research and development funding scheme this fall.
The British government's decision to launch formal dispute talks with Brussels over scientific projects in the European Union, including the €95.5 billion "Horizon Europe" programme;
deepening fears among researchers and universities that the UK is preparing to withdraw completely.
The European Commission chose to link Britain's previously agreed participation in the Horizon Europe projects to the ongoing dispute over post-Brexit trade arrangements in Northern Ireland.
In an increasingly bitter conflict, neither side appears likely to back down.
The two sides will hold crisis talks in Brussels within the next 30 days, but the prospects for a quick solution are slim.
The next stage of arbitration will require the appointment of an independent panel, which will then be given more than three months to reach a decision.
The UK government says researchers and companies urgently need certainty about their funding, and suggests it may formally abandon Horizon Europe next month and create a local alternative without the hassle of going to arbitration.
The UK domestic scheme is unlikely to be an alternative to the European programme, which funds projects covering various research centers across many member countries.
The UK is unlikely to join the Brussels programmes, until at least the next EU budget is in place in 2028, if not then.
political influence
Some researchers, frustrated with the status quo, began to pack their bags.
Among them, malaria researcher at the Francis Crick Institute in London, Moritz Trek, one of the many world-leading scientists in Britain, who received a "Horizon Europe" grant, after Britain's exit from the European Union, only to be notified later By the European Commission, he must either emigrate to another country, linked to the European scientific programme, or give up European funds altogether, in addition to giving up the unique opportunity to lead the project he designed.
Trek said he has now found a research institution in another participating country to host his groundbreaking research on how to modify the malaria parasite that causes the disease in humans, which was awarded a €2m grant by the European Research Council's European Programme, and is now preparing to leave the UK. forever.
“We have become part of the political debate over the Northern Ireland Protocol, but nobody is benefiting from this debate,” the British researcher says. European Research Council funding.” He continued, “We are a small fish in a big game.”
As a result of this situation, universities and research centers throughout Europe flocked to European-funded researchers in Britain, seeking to benefit from their expertise.
Trek confirms that European institutions have contacted him in their quest to attract new talent.
routine procedure
Hendrik Ulbricht, a physicist at the University of Southampton, received multiple offers from abroad.
At the time of his interview, he was taking a flight to his native Germany, to discuss an opportunity to relay his research "Using levitated particles to create highly sensitive gravitational sensors";
It is a technique that Ulbricht hopes to one day use to discover underground masses, such as oil deposits.
His team successfully applied for a grant from the European Innovation Council in the spring of 2021, when the UK's engagement with Horizon Europe appeared to be a mere formality.
But at the end of last year, on notice from the Commission, he handed over his leadership role to an Italian colleague and brought in a new partner from Germany.
This has delayed the start of the project until October 2022.
In that, Ulbricht says: “It was a big blow,” explaining, “I basically launched the project and chose the partners, and I was looking forward to coordinating with the parties involved in the project.
It is disastrous for me.”
But traveling abroad is a tough call.
It is clear from the multiple interviews that the UK has managed to mitigate the brain drain, by relying on large pledges of matching funding and the continued excellence of its universities, to keep some frustrated scholars in their place.
The government has committed to providing the same grants to some researchers, including Ulbricht;
These are grants they would have received from the European Union, albeit with certain conditions.
And now Ulbricht begins to grapple with the British administration's bureaucracy, to take advantage of this funding guarantee.
"There are still many unknowns about how to obtain funding," he said, adding, "So far, I have not received the money."
Chris Drakley, a malaria researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, chose to stay in the UK, but also had to hand over the leadership of his own project to a colleague at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris.
family affairs
A researcher at Imperial College London, Theresa Thurston, decided to stay in Britain, to oversee her project that investigates how bacterial pathogens interact with the immune response.
It won a €1.5m grant from the European Research Council in January, which has now been canceled in conjunction with offers from Spanish universities.
And because she's a mother of three young children, Thurston said, researchers with families are simply less mobile.
Under European Research Council rules, recipients must spend half of their time in one of the countries with full or associated status with the Horizon Europe programme.
"It's very difficult if you have a family," Thurston said. "I have a laboratory funded by European grants, can I transfer it?"
The family, too, had a major influence in David Orton's decision, who decided to remain at York University and declined a Council of Europe scholarship, which had been offered to support his study of European human settlements and their links, through DNA.
Orton said he had been "pained for a while" about the decision to stop cooperation between the UK and the European Research Council, and had received various offers, including one from Denmark.
But the sense of loyalty to his university department, his love of York, and the possibility of alternative funds, in the United Kingdom, convinced him to stay, along with the lack of an important good alternative.
In it, Orton said that the institutions he contacted either did not have the facilities or expertise needed to analyze DNA, or that their proposal did not suit him.
The British researcher said that the move "would have affected the project."
The UK has managed to mitigate the brain drain, relying on large pledges of funding to its universities to keep some frustrated scholars in place.
The British government has committed to providing the same grants to some researchers that they would have received from the European Union, albeit with certain conditions.
95.5
The cost of the "Horizon Europe" program for research and scientific cooperation in the European Union is one billion euros.
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