Funding bonanza for IC
The Research Council science budget for 1997/1998, released recently, denotes a clear intention to support the implementation of specific key projects, as reported in Felix 1075.
This is particularly apparent for research into BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or "mad cow disease") and related diseases, which has received an earmarked Ł17 million from this year’s budget, bringing the total allocation for work on this domain to Ł30 million over three years.
The Imperial College School of Medicine, one of the leading institutions for investigation into these diseases, will be especially affected by this programme. As part of the project of research on the implications of the transmissibility of spongiform encephalopathies, around Ł1 million will be allocated to Imperial College researcher John Collinge and his team. Their mission will be to explore the human prion diseases -the diseases of the same family as the BSE- and especially the Creutzfeld-Jacob syndrome. Dr Rodney Eastwood, from the Financial Planning department, views this allocation as an appreciable but logical recognition of the "excellent, 1st-class work" accomplished by Professor Collinge, who is "making good progress in this difficult and delicate area".
As to the attributions to other fields of research, Dr Eastwood remarks that very little change has been made with respect to the previous budget: "The money allocated to the Research Councils is more or less what there is at present, plus a few small increases", especially for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (plus Ł5 million) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (plus Ł8 million).
The distribution of these sums is not expected to change much either, with a significant majority of the allocations (around 75% for the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council) going, as before, to the most productive departments -the same which obtained grades 5 or 5* at the RAE. If the Royal Society’s position was followed, research funds should even be attributed more selectively as in the past. However, the Planning Office of Imperial College expects very similar allocations for its departments as in the previous years.
This budget has been generally welcomed positively by most research councils, seeing it as a guarantee of stability and effectiveness in British research. Yet some executives have expressed deep concerns as to whether the funding, including these allocations, will be sufficient to support all the high-quality project initiatives which will be presented in the next few years to the Research Councils.
