30th January 2018 1:00
By Blue Tutors
For the first time, the French government has co-funded a research unit in the UK, and the timing could not be more apt. Academics and politicians alike are claiming that this union of academic drive will allow UK academics to access European funding after Brexit. The unit is created in partnership with Imperial College London, which is considered one of the worlds top science institutes and ranked eighth in the QS World University Rankings, and the National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), the biggest research body in France, and will be predominantly a mathematics laboratory.
It is worth noting, however, that the new centre was planned before the referendum took place in 2016, but it is subsequently hoped that it will prove a model of ‘co-operation and a shared approach to funding which will stretch beyond the UK's exit from the EU’. It will, though, be viewed by the French as having the same status as a laboratory in France, so will be managed essentially as if it were still under the EU’s roof. UMI director Richard Craster, professor of applied mathematics at Imperial, told the BBC that the project showed a commitment to "strengthening our ties with Europe by improving mobility and giving new opportunities for researchers to exchange ideas”.
It is rather aptly named after an 18th-Century French mathematician who worked in London, the Unite Mixte Internationale (UMI) Abraham de Moivre has the aim of "bringing together some of the world's best mathematicians”, and the French ambassador said it would "provide a window to reach out to the UK mathematical community at large”. Indeed, the Imperial researchers who work there will equal funding status with French researchers. "All members of the UMI, whatever their nationality, will have equal access to funding, resources and most importantly, opportunities for collaboration," an Imperial spokesman told the BBC. They went on to say that ‘the laboratory will advance knowledge in "number theory, mathematical analysis, biomathematics and financial mathematics”.'
Interestingly but perhaps nit surprisingly, Imperial already has over 200 French staff and nearly 700 French students at its south Kensington base, where the laboratory is to be built in London. President Prof Alice Gast said the new laboratory will "reinforce Imperial's exceptionally strong academic ties with France, as well as our determination to deepen collaborations with European partners”. Indeed, after the EU referendum result, she had promised to "vigorously defend our international values" and said that "political changes" would not restrict the college's research work. "Imperial is and will remain a European university.”
The BBC ended their piece saying that: ‘The UK's universities have been among the biggest net beneficiaries of EU research funding. But there have been concerns about the loss of access to whatever scheme follows the current Horizon 2020, which has provided 80bn euro (£71bn) in research funding. There have also been warnings from UK universities about their academics missing out on international projects commissioned through European research frameworks.’ But what about other disciplines - we can only hope that other relationships are formed before the effects of Brexit start to seep deep into our academic spheres, or we risk falling far behind in a world where we have been at the forefront, even leading the way in some cases, for so long.