The establishment of the £6bn umbrella organisation for UK science funding, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has provoked debate across the research community since it was first mooted. Brainchild of a review by Sir Paul Nurse, UKRI will create what is in effect a new ‘super’ research council, sitting above the seven existing councils, and rolling in Innovate UK and Research England (the research arm of the Higher Education Funding Council for England).



The vision behind UKRI has not found favour in all quarters of British science. Martin Rees, former president of the Royal Society, has been particularly vocal in his opposition to UKRI, fearing the disruption it will bring, at exactly the same time as Brexit is generating wider uncertainties for research funding. Others fear a creeping bureaucratisation and loss of autonomy across the existing funding bodies, with their individual chief executives ceding status and influence to their new UKRI boss.

Last week’s announcement of Sir Mark Walport as UKRI’s inaugural chief executive – a role which was advertised last autumn with a salary of £300,000 – has not quietened the anxiety of some. Lord Rees has spoken out again about the dangers of “single point failure” in such a large “monolithic structure.” Others are more positive, and perhaps feel a need to be circumspect, or to give him a chance before forming an opinion.

Walport, former director of the Wellcome Trust, is currently the government’s chief scientific adviser. He is known as a strong champion for science, but his recent roles have not necessarily required him to be consultative; nor have they given him much familiarity with recent developments in universities (his last university job as head of the division of medicine at Imperial College ended in 2002 with his move to the Wellcome Trust).

In his new role, Walport needs to become the champion for a large and diverse academic community, who are used to close consultation and involvement with funders – and will be vocal if they don’t get it! And around Walport himself, the new UKRI Board (to be chaired by former HM Treasury mandarin Sir John Kingman) must also be demonstrably inclusive. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) which is overseeing appointments to UKRI board has already accepted it made a mistake in paying insufficient attention to diversity in their initial advert, which has now been reissued, with a closing date of late March.

As chief executive of UKRI, Walport will face many challenges. For a start, UKRI’s mandate extends well beyond research to cover innovation. Bringing Innovate UK within the UKRI umbrella has been a point of contention for many in the research and business community. Beyond the translational arm of the Wellcome Trust, this is not an area where Walport has much prior experience, but if the UK’s new industrial strategy is to succeed, he has to get this right. This strategy, which is currently out for consultation, outlines a host of novel sectors and processes in which disruptive technology will have an important role to play.

Added to this mix is the new £2 billion Industrial Strategy Challenges Fund which has to deliver rapid results. UKRI has oversight of this fund, and is going to have to work out how to invest it wisely and effectively, factoring in arguments about geography and the redistribution of resources away from the so-called “golden triangle”.

Walport was a fan of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse but, without that single focus, how will decisions be taken to support research excellence alongside regional regeneration? Some will recall that the decision at the end of 2014 to base the £235m Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials in Manchester was not thought by everyone to have been scientifically transparent, even if the political driver was clear. Squaring politics, geography and excellence, in a way that satisfies both politicians and the wider research community, will be no mean feat.

A final, core challenge will be the black hole in funding left if Brexit negotiations mean that the UK is excluded from future European programmes, including the European Research Council (ERC) and the successor framework to Horizon 2020. Indeed, although the research community is virtually unanimous in wanting to secure continued participation, it has been suggested that Walport could be in favour of leaving these programmes and going it alone. We should all hope that this is not true, because there is far more at stake here than access to funding.

As someone who sits on the ERC’s scientific council, I know better than most that its prestige as a research funder depends on excellence being its sole criterion and its panels being truly international – without parochial politics or cliques dominating. Conflicts of interest in ERC decision-making are taken far more seriously than I have ever seen in a UK research council’s deliberations.

So I hope Walport will battle hard for European funding in Whitehall. We would all be the losers if not, because this funding enables ground-breaking and impactful research to be carried out within the UK – exactly what is needed to drive innovation and contribute to economic regeneration. Such funding also strengthens global links through international teams.

There is of course a positive case to be made for UKRI. Implemented sensibly, it should offer opportunities that are too often lost in the existing structures. In particular, interdisciplinary research should benefit, if Walport can introduce seamless processes for refereeing. Weakening the mono-disciplinary mentality, which is depressingly common even in a single research council’s grant-awarding panels – and especially where a scientific problem straddles more than one of the existing councils – can only be a good thing. And one of UKRI’s main objectives is to improve the prospects for cross-cutting topics, through new funding streams like the Global Challenges Research Fund.

It is impossible for any single person to have experience across all disciplines. For Walport, the challenge will be greatest in social sciences, arts and humanities, where his interventions are likely to be watched particularly closely.

Walport is no stranger to the corridors of power, but how he walks along them will now be scrutinised by the entire research community. His first goal must be to reassure that community that he will listen as closely to their views, as to those of his political masters. Unafraid of criticism as he is, he must remember that academic criticism is often based on evidence and experience. As he becomes the sole accounting officer for UK research, I hope he recognises that the community will collectively wish to hold him to account.

Athene Donald is professor of experimental physics and Master of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. She tweets at @athenedonald.