Government allocates £950m funding for UK science training
A total of £950m has been announced to fund technologies identified as being drivers for growth and training for the engineers and scientists that will help deliver them.
Speaking today at Policy Exchange, the minister for universities and science, David Willetts, announced the allocation of £350m toward the training of future science leaders and outlined how £600m of science funding declared in last year’s Autumn Statement will be spent.
Willetts said the £600m will be targeted at ‘eight great technologies’ that will help drive future economic growth. These areas are big data, space, robotics and autonomous systems, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, agri-science, advanced materials and energy.
The investment builds on the £108m of Autumn Statement funding for synthetic biology, regenerative medicine and the National Biologics Industry Innovation Centre and £28m to the National Composites Centre in Bristol.
To accompany the speech, Policy Exchange has published a pamphlet, Eight Great Technologies, authored by Willetts.
Willetts also announced one of the UK’s largest investments in training for the engineering and physical sciences in the form of the forthcoming £350m call that will be issued by EPSRC in February.
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Comment: Engineers must adapt to AI or fall behind
A fascinating piece and nice to see a broad discussion beyond GenAI and the hype bandwagon. AI (all flavours) like many things invented or used by...