Question: what do you think brexit will effect

Steven Street answered on 15 Nov 2016:

Hi birthmark edmunds,

Well its too early to say really. it all depends on how the negotiations go… However, there are two things to worry about:

1) the potential loss of EU research funds: my supervisor has a ERC grant worth some 2 million euros to undertake research… UK scientists currently win more of the ERC grants than they pay into the budget, so we are a net winner from EU science funds currently. We would hope to remain part of the ERC and Horizon 2020, however if we were to leave we would want to be guaranteed to have our lost funding matched by the government instead.

2) the free movement of people, especially highly skilled scientists: One of the best things about being in the EU is that all of the EU’s brightest scientists are free to go and work in whatever country they desire. As the UK has some excellent universities and research, many highly talented scientists currently come to the UK. For example, my supervisor is Spanish, and the postdocs in our lab are from Spain, India and Germany! This combination of excellent universities and excellent EU talent also helps to attract more researchers from outside the EU, eg from the USA. If we ban them from coming to the UK, we loose out on all of their skills, and this will in turn dissuade others from coming to the UK.

Also critically, people who win ERC grants are normally the best and brightest scientists of our generation. They go on to win more grants, and develop technologies that can create jobs and money for universities and and the country they are in. Researchers with ERC grants won’t be allowed to work in the UK with them, so the best talent could sadly go to other EU countries like Germany and France….

But as i said, this can all be avoided if we opt into the EU research scheme! 🙂

Steve