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Cern director-general Mark Thomson is said to be \u2018disappointed\u2019 by the funding decision \u00a9 Fabrice Coffrini\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\nUnlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n
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The UK is scrapping more than \u00a3250mn of planned funding for four big physics infrastructure projects, including an upgrade of the Cern particle accelerator led since last month by a senior British scientist.<\/p>\n
The cuts, among them finance for a transatlantic partnership to build an electron-ion collider near New York City, are part of a wider research shake-up to control costs and invest more in government priority areas such as AI and life sciences.<\/p>\n
Separate plans to slash budgets for physics and moves to temporarily pause grants in other research areas have caused alarm among scientists, but officials insist the UK remains committed both to advanced infrastructure and international collaborations.<\/p>\n
However, Sir Ian Chapman, chief executive of UK Research and Innovation, the umbrella research funding body, said on Thursday that the UK did not \u201chave the bandwidth\u201d for a planned \u00a349mn contribution to improving the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) run near Geneva by Cern, which is funded by 25 countries.<\/p>\n
Cern director-general Mark Thomson is said to be \u2018disappointed\u2019 by the funding decision \u00a9 Fabrice Coffrini\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
British physicist Mark Thomson was appointed Cern\u2019s director-general after a campaign by the previous Conservative government for his candidacy. Thomson was \u201cdisappointed\u201d by the funding decision but understood the \u201cfinancial constraints that we\u2019re operating under\u201d, said Michele Dougherty, executive chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which is part of UKRI.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no change in our relationship with Cern here,\u201d Chapman told reporters. \u201cWe remain the second largest contributor to Cern. We\u2019re completely supportive of what\u2019s happening at the LHC and the upgrades.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomson said the news about the UKRI budget changes was a \u201cconcern\u201d but any potential impact on Cern\u2019s current activities and future projects was unclear. \u201cThe UK has always shown very strong support to Cern, and I have no reason to believe that this has changed,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The other cuts from projects backed by UKRI\u2019s dedicated infrastructure fund are \u00a359mn planned for the electron-ion collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US and two separate UK projects totalling \u00a3174mn for advanced materials analysis methods.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not questioning the science return that we would get from those investments \u2014 but we simply don\u2019t have the money to do everything,\u201d Dougherty said.<\/p>\n
The Cern project decision was \u201cmore terrible news for physics, for the UK and for global scientific progress\u201d, said Paul Howarth, president-elect of the UK\u2019s Institute of Physics.\u00a0\u201cThe withdrawal of funding in this abrupt way is incredibly damaging to our international reputation as a science superpower and could cause long-term damage to the UK economy,\u201d Howarth added.<\/p>\n
About \u00a35mn of the \u00a349mn Cern upgrade money has already been used, UK officials said. The cut was first reported by Research Professional News<\/a>. <\/p>\n