Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Research Councils launch strategy to boost global reach

Ian Pearson, Minister for Science and Innovation, said, “International collaboration is vital – we should be working with other countries in order to promote scientific excellence on a global scale.

“Collaboration with other countries will help us continue to develop world class science here in Great Britain, as well as helping build the scientific capacity of other nations.

“A recent study showed that almost 40 per cent of UK scientific output over the last five years involved international collaboration - a fifty per cent increase compared with the previous five years.

“By providing a coordinated approach to international research, RCUK will be able to make the UK more visible and attractive as a research partner for organisations, research teams and individuals from all over the world.”

The new strategy will promote the movement of researchers between countries and encourage more collaboration between UK researchers and their colleagues from around the world. It also plans to give our researchers the best access to data, facilities and resources and promote the UK as a world centre for research and innovation. The strategy also explains how the Research Councils aim to influence the global research agenda and ensure that UK and international priorities are aligned.

RCUK’s strategy highlights some of the Research Councils’ international engagement. These include:

•The Natural Environment Research Council’s RAPID programme, which brings together a community of researchers from the UK, USA, Germany, The Netherlands and Norway to improve our understanding of rapid climate change.

•A scholarship scheme jointly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council that enables researchers to work with an international community of scholars at the Library of Congress, the world’s largest library in Washington DC

•Through its membership of the European Southern Observatory, the Science & Technology Facilities Council will enable UK researchers to play a major role in the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, one of the largest ground-based astronomy projects in the world.

•Bilateral arrangements between the Economic and Social Research Council and overseas funders to compare UK and Australian data on the effect of crime on mental health.

•Networks funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to discuss research challenges arising from the construction of Dongtan, the world’s first sustainable city, near Shanghai.

Speaking on behalf of the Research Councils UK, Professor Ian Diamond said, “The Research Councils are striving to tackle the challenges that face today’s society. We can best achieve this by removing obstacles to international collaboration and by sharing facilities and data. Working closely together through the RCUK partnership, we can accelerate this process.”

Julia Short | alfa
Further information:
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/publications/international.pdf

Im Focus: (Re)solving the jet/cocoon riddle of a gravitational wave event

An international research team including astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has combined radio telescopes from five continents to prove the existence of a narrow stream of material, a so-called jet, emerging from the only gravitational wave event involving two neutron stars observed so far. With its high sensitivity and excellent performance, the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg played an important role in the observations.

In August 2017, two neutron stars were observed colliding, producing gravitational waves that were detected by the American LIGO and European Virgo detectors....

Im Focus: Light from a roll – hybrid OLED creates innovative and functional luminous surfaces

Up to now, OLEDs have been used exclusively as a novel lighting technology for use in luminaires and lamps. However, flexible organic technology can offer much more: as an active lighting surface, it can be combined with a wide variety of materials, not just to modify but to revolutionize the functionality and design of countless existing products. To exemplify this, the Fraunhofer FEP together with the company EMDE development of light GmbH will be presenting hybrid flexible OLEDs integrated into textile designs within the EU-funded project PI-SCALE for the first time at LOPEC (March 19-21, 2019 in Munich, Germany) as examples of some of the many possible applications.

The Fraunhofer FEP, a provider of research and development services in the field of organic electronics, has long been involved in the development of...

Im Focus: Regensburg physicists watch electron transfer in a single molecule

For the first time, an international team of scientists based in Regensburg, Germany, has recorded the orbitals of single molecules in different charge states in a novel type of microscopy. The research findings are published under the title “Mapping orbital changes upon electron transfer with tunneling microscopy on insulators” in the prestigious journal “Nature”.

The building blocks of matter surrounding us are atoms and molecules. The properties of that matter, however, are often not set by these building blocks...

Im Focus: University of Konstanz gains new insights into the recent development of the human immune system

Scientists at the University of Konstanz identify fierce competition between the human immune system and bacterial pathogens

Cell biologists from the University of Konstanz shed light on a recent evolutionary process in the human immune system and publish their findings in the...

Im Focus: Transformation through Light

Laser physicists have taken snapshots of carbon molecules C₆₀ showing how they transform in intense infrared light

When carbon molecules C₆₀ are exposed to an intense infrared light, they change their ball-like structure to a more elongated version. This has now been...