HIGH RISK SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH COULD DELIVER HIGH REWARDS

The government is to launch an independent body to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research.

The Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA) will be led by scientists who will have the freedom to identify and fund transformational science and technology at speed, said the government.

It will have a much higher tolerance for failure than is normal, recognising that in research, the freedom to fail is often also the freedom to succeed.

The news has been welcomed by the manufacturing and scientific communities. The president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Sir Jim McDonald, said: “We are delighted to see the government deliver on its commitment to a high-risk high-reward funding agency. I hope this ambitious new funding mechanism will help to unlock radical innovation and enable step changes in technology that provides value for our economy and society at large.

“Engineering is central to an ambitious agency of this kind, forming the bridge between research and innovation to enable technological and commercial breakthroughs.”

The Academy put forward its recommendations for the new agency in March 2020, when the idea was first proposed.

Dr Nick Hawker, founder of First Light Fusion, the Oxford-based company researching energy generation via inertial fusion, said this country has a long track record of giving away our technological crown jewels too early, while our US friends build vast global champions.

“It doesn’t need to be this way,” he said. “Our small island is a buzzing hub of incredible talent, ideas and innovation. We have a thriving tech sector, not just in apps, but clean tech, fintech, quantum computing. You name it, we are leading the charge.”

The UK has a long history of inventing that dates back centuries – from Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing who pioneered early predecessors of the computer, Thomas Newcomen and James Watt who transformed travel by creating steam engines to William Grove who created fuel cells and Frank Partridge who helped save millions of lives by developing the first portable defibrillator. Then there is Professor John Goodenough the Inventor of the lithium-ion battery in Oxford, whose idea was commercialised not by a UK company but by Sony in Japan.

Dr Hawker added: “US universities top the charts when it comes to innovation, but Oxford University boasts just as many patents per research pound spent. First Light Fusion, the company I co-founded which was spun out of Oxford, has produced an invention (including both patents and trade secrets) every 3.5 days over the last five years.

The creation of ARIA is backed by £800 million to fund the most inspiring inventors turn their transformational ideas into new technologies, products and services – helping to boost the UK’s position as a global science superpower. The government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance said: “The importance of scientific innovation has never been clearer than over the last year and this new body provides an exciting new funding mechanism for pioneering R&D.”

The new body will complement the work of UK Research and Innovation and help the government meet its target of spending 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development by 2027, bringing it in line with the current Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average. Total research and development expenditure in the UK in 2018 was just 1.71 per cent of GDP.

ARIA will be based on models that have proved successful in other countries, in particular the influential USA-based Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “By stripping back unnecessary red tape and putting power in the hands of our innovators, the agency will be given the freedom to drive forward the technologies of tomorrow, as we continue to build back better through innovation.”

Central to the agency will be its ability to deliver funding to the UK’s most pioneering researchers flexibly and at speed. It will experiment with funding models including programme grants, seed grants and prize incentives, and will be able to start and stop projects according to success, redirecting funding elsewhere. The aim is for ARIA to be fully operational by 2022.

Stephen Phipson, Chief Executive of the manufacturing support organsation

Make UK, said: “The UK has always been an innovative nation but has struggled to turn many ideas in to commercial reality, with government and investors too riskaverse to take on many projects.

“This new agency will provide a welcome boost towards seizing the opportunities that science and technological breakthroughs are already providing, and which will be critical to solving the many societal challenges we face.

“Government must now build on this by reforming and boosting the R&D Tax Credit, in particular including capital expenditure.

“Together these measures should help turbocharge the UK’s science and innovation performance.”

Research and development facts

• In the UK in 2018, total expenditure on research and development was £37.1 billion, £558 per head, or the equivalent of 1.71 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

• While research and development investment has risen from £20 billion in 1986 to the current £37.1 billion, as a proportion of GDP, expenditure fell over this period (it was the equivalent of 19 per cent of GDP in 1986)

• The Government has a target for total research and development investment to reach 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027, which is the average across the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

Research and development expenditure in Germany is the equivalent of 3.1 per cent of GDP, in the US it is 2.8 per cent and in France, 2.2 per cent.

 Source: UK Government

In 1980 Professor John Goodenough, a visiting professor at the Department of Chemistry at Oxford University, discovered lithium cobalt oxide which led to the development of the highperformance rechargeable lithiumion batteries which have gone on to power the world’s portable electronics revolution.

However, it was Sony which commercialised the discovery in 1991, and the UK saw minimal financial benefit. The government is determined that its new Advanced Research & Invention Agency won’t let that happen again. Professor Goodenough won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2019.

2019

Pharmaceuticals

Motor vehicles and parts

Miscellaneous business activities

Computer programming, info services

Aerospace

Software development

Research and development services

Machinery and equipment

Telecommunications

Chemicals and chemical products

Precision instruments & optical products

Consumer electronics

Electrical equipment

Computers and peripheral equipment

Food products and beverages

Construction

Shipbuilding

Wholesale and retail trade

Other manufactured goods

Fabricated metal products

Public administration

Rubber and plastic products

Extractive Industries

Agriculture, forestry, fishing

Electricity, gas and water supply

Refined petroleum products and coke...

Other transport equipment

Other non-metallic mineral products

Pulp, paper and paper products

Non-ferrous metals

Transport and storage Casting of iron and steel Textiles, clothing and leather products

 Source: ONS, Business enterprise research and development, UK: 2019, Data table 2