revealed earlier this week<\/a> that STFC has to find savings of \u00a3162m in its budget by 2029\u201130, which will require \u201cmajor change\u201d.<\/p>\nIn a letter to the UK\u2019s physics community sent on 28 January, STFC executive chair Michele Dougherty said the news that some research grants would be stopped or reduced came on the heels of \u201ctough decisions on Infrastructure Fund projects before Christmas\u201d.<\/p>\n
Since 2022, UKRI\u2019s Infrastructure Fund had planned to invest a total of \u00a3481m into a portfolio of research and innovation infrastructure investments, which it said would \u201cmaintain the UK\u2019s position as a research and innovation superpower\u201d.<\/p>\n
The project involving Cern was due to move into its construction phase, with funding to be spent over eight years starting in 2026. RPN understands that 12 UK universities are involved in the project, and that hundreds of positions for postdocs and PhD students could be at risk. A source close to the project warned that a freeze could endanger the UK\u2019s position in an area of science in which it is currently world-leading.<\/p>\n
\u2018Complete loss of credibility\u2019<\/p>\n
Another project affected by the infrastructure cuts is a major new particle accelerator facility, the Electron-Ion Collider, being built at the Brookhaven National Laboratory near New York in the US. That is led by the US Department of Energy and includes more than 40 countries. The UK\u2019s contribution was meant to be \u00a358.8m over nine years, funding seven different universities in the UK and two national labs, Daresbury and Rutherford Appleton.<\/p>\n
Speaking to RPN, Daria Sokhan, senior lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Glasgow who is the principal investigator for the project\u2019s planned UK contribution, described the EIC as the \u201cnext premier facility for nuclear and hadron physics\u201d. She said that for a \u201crelatively modest investment, [the] UK was providing systems which were fundamental to underpinning the facility\u2019s science goal, and buying us significant influence\u201d.<\/p>\n
As with the Cern project, Sokhan said, the UK\u2019s withdrawal from EIC would damage the country\u2019s international reputation \u201cenormously\u201d. With the project due to start in April, she said pulling out would be a \u201ccomplete loss of credibility and a\u00a0complete loss of trust\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sokhan said that the EIC project was meant to fund about 50 people from the UK, more than 10 of whom were early-career researchers, but the wider impact on the workforce would be \u201cmuch bigger\u201d.<\/p>\n
In addition, Sokhan continued, the loss of UK expertise would be a major hit to the project. \u201cThe EIC\u2019s power lies in its extremely high luminosity (intensity of colliding beams) and in the precision of measurement possible with its detectors. The UK\u2019s contribution is absolutely crucial for both.\u201d<\/p>\n
Projects \u2018paused or discontinued\u2019<\/p>\n
Other projects whose funding has been thrown into doubt include a national facility due to be built at the University of Liverpool, dubbed Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging. UKRI said the project, which was to receive \u00a3124.4m over six years from 2026, was to be \u201ca globally unique national user facility for the direct observation of fundamental dynamic structural and chemical processes\u201d.<\/p>\n
The fourth project was a national facility for mass spectrometry called C\u2011MASS, due to receive \u00a349.35m over five years from the Infrastructure Fund.<\/p>\n
A UKRI spokesperson said: \u201cFollowing the spending review that gave UKRI a record four-year settlement to deliver a new mission, UKRI has reviewed a number of Infrastructure Fund projects which had been planned but were yet to begin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sought independent advice and have taken forward an exciting portfolio of new infrastructure investments, which include projects in clean energy, medical imaging and cultural heritage. However, as\u00a0usual, there were also many exciting projects that we could not support.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome projects, which had begun scoping work subject to business case approval, have been paused or discontinued. It is not unusual that we release investment in tranches, and we should always be pursuing the most transformative projects that deliver against national priorities and our mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
UKRI said that it will formally announce successful projects soon, and that unsuccessful projects could be reconsidered for funding in\u00a02027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Major international collaborations with Cern and US Department of Energy in jeopardy The leaders of four large-scale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2302,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-399580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}