Scottish Research At A Turning Point

In Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, it’s hard to miss the new buildings that are rising amid the old and historic ones. Among the largest construction projects is a $1.4 billion hospital campus by the River Clyde. The river once supported shipbuilding, but this part of Glasgow’s industrial past declined decades ago, and the city now is betting on science and technology.

When it opens next year, the hospital site will also be home to Stratified Medicine Scotland, one of eight innovation centers being set up with $180 million in Scottish government funding to target key economic sectors. Another, the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC), is up the hill on the University of Strathclyde campus. The centers will draw on collaborations among Scottish universities, companies, and other partners across the country as well as outside it.

Closer to the city center is the University of Glasgow-led Centre for Sensor & Imaging Systems. It resides in the Inovo building, which Scottish Enterprise, the country’s main economic development agency, opened in January. Under construction next door is Strathclyde’s $150 million Technology & Innovation Centre, or TIC.

Support for the innovation centers comes from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the country’s primary backer of higher education and research; Scottish Enterprise; and Highlands & Islands Enterprise. But science and technology initiatives within Scotland also draw on funding, infrastructure, and collaborations from the rest of the United Kingdom and the European Union at large.

Scotland, today, is part of the U.K., along with England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Locals from the science community like to brag that among that group Scotland “punches above its weight,” bringing in 13% of total Research Councils UK grants in 2012–13 despite being just 8% of the U.K. population of 64 million.

But as much as Scotland benefits from being part of the U.K., many in the country see drawbacks. In 2013, the Scottish Parliament started the process toward a national referendum that, if passed on Sept. 18, will make Scotland independent.

Although Scotland already has control over its education, health, and economic development, a yes vote would bring further change to everything from taxes, finances, and employment to natural resources, international relations, and defense. It also would likely impact the country’s science and research base.

People involved in getting Glasgow’s new innovation centers off the ground are trying not to let the looming vote distract them. Without exception, they decline to disclose their own views on Scottish independence, but they do concede that the prospect raises many questions about the continuity of funding and other complications their initiatives might face.

Scotland’s 19 universities have remained studiously neutral, instead posing questions to, and seeking assurances from, the U.K. and Scottish governments through Universities Scotland, their representative body, according to Steve Graham, TIC’s executive director.

Although the vote no doubt occupies some of Graham’s thoughts, a bigger preoccupation is the opening of the 25,000-m² TIC this fall. “The good news is the building is full,” he says. It will house up to 1,200 academic and industrial staff and researchers, including graduate students.

About 40% of TIC is reconfigurable labs, and the rest is open-plan office space, all designed to foster collaboration, Graham says. Although not a teaching facility, the building does have a 650-person conference and event space. Existing activities moving into the building and new initiatives will span advanced manufacturing, health, energy, and renewable technologies.

“This is the largest single migration that we’ve undertaken in the university’s history and its largest single investment,” Graham says. About two-thirds of the cost of building TIC was paid for by the university; the rest was from SFC, Scottish Enterprise, and EU development funds. They’ve invested, he says, “because they see economic value to the U.K. and Scotland in terms of growth in these emerging-technology areas.”

Part of TIC’s mandate is to work closely with industry, but that comes naturally at Strathclyde, which was founded 218 years ago to be “a place of useful learning,” Graham explains. “Unashamedly, the TIC is about translational research between fundamental science and impacting business and society. It’s about research excellence and growth, industrial impacts and collaboration, and also creating jobs.”

Similar sentiments are expressed by the industry-led IBioIC, which opened its doors in January. Its supporters are “very much focused on trying to get the universities working on projects that are much closer to commercialization,” IBioIC Chief Executive Officer Roger Kilburn says. “Our aim is to work closely with industry and bring problems that industry has to be solved within the academic institutions.”

IBioIC’s activities also align with Scottish Enterprise’s national plan for industrial biotechnology released in late 2013, Kilburn explains. Scotland would like to see its industrial biotech sector create 1,500 jobs within five years and grow to $1.5 billion in annual revenues by 2025. To get there, Kilburn envisions tapping into about $8 billion in related funding available from Scottish, U.K., and EU sources.

If Scotland votes for independence, there may be some hiccups as funding sources are sorted out, particularly while Scotland applies for membership in the EU. Even so, Kilburn still sees a “huge opportunity” to focus on Scotland’s interests in industrial biotech.

IBioIC is coordinating academic-industry collaborations. It has 25 industrial members that have identified themes spanning feedstocks, biotransformations, and processing. Strathclyde hosts IBioIC, and 13 other Scottish universities and institutes participate, contributing expertise in health, agricultural, industrial, and marine biotechnology.

To increase the skills base, the universities will offer a collaborative M.Sc. program, to begin next month with 20 funded places, Kilburn says. Nine Ph.D. studentships, largely supported by companies, are also in place. By September 2015, he hopes, there will also be a technical degree program.

Three Ph.D. students are sponsored by Ingenza, an industrial biotech firm based in Edinburgh. Along with providing industry experience, the student programs reinforce industry’s links with academia and the importance of taking a multidisciplinary approach, according to Ingenza Managing Director Ian Fotheringham. The company was a founding corporate member of IBioIC, along with GlaxoSmithKline and the petrochemical maker Ineos.

Fotheringham is a keen advocate for creating hubs that connect interested parties, regardless of location. For example, he points to “phenomenally successful” knowledge transfer networks and special interest groups from the U.K.’s Technology Strategy Board.

Like others in the business and science communities, Fotheringham sees Scotland enjoying an advantage over England, its neighbor to the south, despite being one-tenth the size. “It’s a smaller community but with a lot of high-quality universities, so there’s a real opportunity to bring people together,” he says.

Scottish government ministers are approachable, and Scottish Enterprise plays a pivotal role in “providing support at the interface between government needs and industry needs,” adds Martin Tangney, president and chief scientific officer at Celtic Renewables, an Edinburgh-based biofuels firm and IBioIC member. “You can’t underestimate how important the network is in Scotland.”

Drawing on Scotland’s native resources, Celtic Renewables is developing a process to make biobutanol from whiskey production residues. The company is a 2012 spin-off of Edinburgh Napier University’s Biofuel Research Centre, which Tangney set up in 2007 and still directs.

Although Celtic Renewables has decidedly Scottish ties, its funding history shows how deeply entwined Scotland is with the U.K. and continental Europe.

Scottish Enterprise’s Proof of Concept Programme supported early work on the biobutanol process. Just recently, the company got $2 million, of which two-thirds came from the U.K.’s Department of Energy & Climate Change. It will use the money to test its process at the EU’s Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent, Belgium. To build its first plant in Scotland, the company will apply to the U.K. Department for Transport, which has $40 million available for demonstration facilities.

Tangney acknowledges the importance of Celtic Renewables’ supporters. “The reason we have been successful is because of the support we have had from the Scottish government,” he says about getting the company off the ground. “But it really is a genuine international partnership driving the company forward.”

Similarly, he has an international view toward the firm’s business and the ultimate impact of its technology. Whatever happens with the referendum, Tangney expects support will continue because the value proposition remains the same. “We will work with the government in whatever incarnation it is after Sept. 18,” he says.

For its part, the Scottish government has indicated its desire to maintain current levels of research investment as an independent country. In April, it published a vision for higher education research as it outlined Scotland’s future. “We will maintain existing collaborations while extending our global reach with new partnerships,” the government wrote. “With independence we will have full powers to develop a research funding policy and landscape tailored to Scotland’s strengths and needs.”

Officials have also said that Scotland is committed to remaining part of a common U.K. research area, but the U.K. takes issue with the idea. In late July, Greg Clark, the U.K. Universities, Science & Cities minister, pointed out that “the U.K. government has made clear that national governments fund national research. There is no international precedent for sharing or replicating a system on the scale of the current U.K. funding streams across international borders.”

In its late-2013 analysis of Scottish science and research, the U.K. noted that an independent Scotland would also have to consider its research infrastructure needs. “National institutions would operate on behalf of the continuing U.K. as before but would have no power or obligation to act in, or on behalf of, an independent Scottish state.” In short, access to U.K. facilities could not be guaranteed, and if access were available, it would not be on the same terms.

Concerns also exist around the ability for intra-U.K. programs to continue. While the Scottish government asserts that they can and will, the U.K. government and leading academics have cast doubt. In a letter to The Times, presidents of the Royal Society, British Academy, and Academy of Medical Sciences wrote that “the strong links and collaborations which exist in the current open system would be put at risk, with any new machinery put in place to attempt to restore them likely to be expensive and bureaucratic.”

At a grassroots level, academics are divided. The proindependence Academics for YES group contends that Scottish educational values will be secured and universities enhanced with independence. The group also fears that staying part of the U.K. will expose Scottish research and science to U.K. budget cuts.

Meanwhile, the academic arm of Better Together is against a change, arguing that Scottish universities and research have thrived as part of the U.K. According to the group, the Scottish government “fails to provide credible answers to the most fundamental questions” on how funding currently from various public and private U.K. sources would be replicated.

The universities that the academics work for, meanwhile, are more diplomatic. “Both the Scottish and U.K. governments have strongly affirmed the world-leading quality of the research we have here and what that delivers economically, socially, and culturally for Scotland and for the rest of the U.K.,” professor Pete Downes, convener for Universities Scotland, said in April.

But as to what happens on Sept. 18, the organization does not have a preferred outcome, stating “It is for the people of Scotland to decide our constitutional future.”