Imperial gets 20% of its research money from the EU
That amounts to £342 million over the last decade
Imperial receives just over 20% of its research funding from the EU, according to a report by a research software firm.
Over the last ten years, the EU has given Imperial grants in the region of £342 million.
The research hints towards the idea that if the public vote for Brexit in June’s referendum, this funding would be lost, leaving an annual £1 billion gap in British research.
It reports that 22 other London institutions also benefit from EU grants, with King’s getting 30% of its funding from the EU, and Greenwich 25%.
Digital Science’s report also showed that the UK is the second-biggest beneficiary of EU funding for science, getting a quarter of its funding from the union, amounting to £967 million in funding last year alone. This is about 16% of the EU’s total research grant budget.
In the last decade, British research facilities have received just over £8 billion from the EU, coming in second to Germany. Since 2009, the UK has got back around 7% of its EU subs from such funding. The EU pays for 41% of the UK’s publicly funded cancer research and 62% of its nanotechnology funding, both of which have significant bases at Imperial.
Unlike Germany, however, we only spend 1.63% of our gross domestic product on research, whereas Germany dedicates 2.85%, suggesting that we are more heavily relying on this EU funding than they are.
Regardless of your political leanings, it’s obvious from the paper that the UK has become pretty dependent on EU funding. Scientists for Britain, the Brexit campaign group, says that countries outside the EU, like Israel, Norway and Iceland still receive science funding from the union, and that the nordic countries actually have the greatest funding per capita from the EU commission’s £61 billion ‘Horizon 2020’ research programme.
The battle for hearts and minds continue across Imperial continues this week, as ‘Students for Britain’, the Brexit campaign group, started to distribute their leaflets across campus.
The union is hosting an EU debate on the 2nd of June in Skempton LT 164, and the referendum is on the 23rd of June. You can register to vote until the 7th of June.
