Probing mind

The government is clamping down on universities in a bid to get them to produce clear results and applications for their research. Academics are now asked to justify their aims, set out their plans and speculate on their likely conclusions — or their funding is pulled.

While on the surface this seems a sensible approach, Oxford University’s Prof George Smith views it as dangerous and damaging. Industry may benefit in the short term, he believes, but we will lose a whole generation of future technologies.

Sceptics might be tempted to dismiss Smith as an academic moaning from his ivory tower. But, as head of the university’s pioneering materials science department and chairman of an up-and-coming UK nanotech firm, his warnings should not be lightly dismissed. Smith’s Oxford materials department has an all-industry advisory panel made up of directors of technology from Rolls-Royce, Qinetiq, BNFL and Hewlett-Packard, and they back his researchers to seek out the materials that their engineers will use tomorrow, rather than the cautious research he believes the government is forcing.