Brexit Implications: EU Funding Received by UK Institutions in the Last Ten Years #BrexitScience

Calling researchers and anyone interested in the implications of Brexit on science

We want to hear from you! Share with us your thoughts using #BrexitScience on Twitter

A possible way to consider the potential effects of Brexit on the UK research community is to look at the EU funding received by UK institutions in the last ten years.

That was the idea behind a tweet sent by our portfolio company ÜberResearch (@UberResearch) on Friday that quickly caught the attention of the Twittersphere.

The ÜberResearch team did a quick search on Dimensions, their grant database containing more than $1 trillion of historic and current research funding, to see what had been awarded to UK universities by either the European Research Council or the European Commission. They then shared on Twitter a screenshot of the information, broken down by university.

Unsurprisingly, this was popular news and within an hour their tweet had been reshared over 50 times, and by the end of the day, it had reached the attention of journalists, politicians and a huge number of researchers.

The tweet now has over 440 retweets and counting, mostly from university researchers, many of whom have been sharing their concerns about whether this shortfall in funding would be made up if the EU sources stopped – a strong indicator of the worries that researchers in the UK now have about losing a significant portion of their research funding.

If you are interested in the implications Brexit may have on science, please share with us your thoughts using #BrexitScience. If you have something to say – we encourage you to get involved.

EU Funding received by UK Universities in last 10 years that may need to be found elsewhere in the future pic.twitter.com/bMUTaxZUFc

— ÜberResearch (@UberResearch) June 24, 2016

For further reading, you can check out our Digital Research Report titled: Examining Implications of Brexit for the UK Research Base