Like many people, I am often focused on tackling current challenges, and taking time to reflect on progress takes a back seat. As I enter the last four months of my tenure as chief executive of UK Research Innovation, I have been looking back at what has been achieved.
Research and innovation have long been a globally acknowledged strength in the UK, and they are widely recognised as central to delivering the decade of renewal at the heart of this government’s agenda.
Across all the government’s five missions, throughout our public services and for people across the UK, research and innovation are key. They are fundamentally about hope and empowerment. Embedded as part of a truly shared endeavour, they can bring people together to improve lives and livelihoods, for everyone. Research and innovation have the power to turn challenges into opportunities, creating a common purpose and the tools to find solutions.
Now we need a step change in how we leverage this strength for the UK, fostering a vibrant, inclusive, agile and – particularly importantly – a fully joined-up research and innovation endeavour, so that we can rapidly find solutions to problems and solutions can deliver impact.
To achieve this goal, we need to be fully joined up – not only across research and innovation, but across government, the investor community, public services and the public.
This is where UK Research and Innovation comes in. We are the largest public funder of research and innovation in the UK, supporting and serving all disciplines and all sectors across the UK. We are an arm’s-length body of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and we work across government departments to ensure that research and innovation can and does deliver for government and for the UK, now and in the future. If colleagues across government would like more information on how we work with individual departments, they can email externalaffairs@ukri.org.
As our strategy says, we aim to Transform Tomorrow Together, creating sustainable, inclusive economic growth, improved public services, productivity and high-quality jobs across the UK.
We welcome the government’s continued commitment to research and innovation announced in the Autumn Budget. We recognise that we are in a challenging fiscal environment with constrained budgets across the public sector. It is crucial, therefore, that we work across government to ensure that the whole public R&D investment portfolio delivers value for money and, in partnership with our communities, stakeholders and other funders, we maximise the impact and leverage of our investments. This level of connectivity requires a significant investment in time, which is a precious resource. However, embedding collaboration as the default way of working overall saves time and money, through deduplicating and pooling expertise. This involves significant culture change for many, with working patterns often characterised by dedicated teams focused on delivery of a ringfenced set of objectives.
It is UKRI’s role as the nation’s research and innovation agency to curate a portfolio of investments that improve lives and livelihoods for all citizens. Our responsibility is to maximise the impact of our work, with every pound we invest delivering on multiple outcomes – be that in a person’s training, a new discovery, a research infrastructure or a company’s scale-up.
"This level of connectivity requires a significant investment in time, which is a precious resource. However, embedding collaboration as the default way of working overall saves time and money, through deduplicating and pooling expertise"
With UKRI’s breadth of capabilities, expertise, sector networks and investment approaches, we are a tried and trusted partner for government.
Our work with DSIT, which has a cross-government remit, along with our close relationships with the network of departmental chief scientific advisers, provides the opportunity to make the most of public investment in R&D, delivering impact across the UK.
For example, one of UKRI’s five cross-council strategic themes, Tackling Infections, is bolstering our national defence and response capabilities by tackling infectious diseases that pose threats to people, livestock, crops and natural resources in more integrated and innovative ways. This includes a successful partnership with Defra on rapid-response programmes to tackle avian flu outbreaks and vector-borne disease.
Vector-borne diseases – those carried by fleas, ticks, mosquitos and other animals – are a major threat to global animal and human health. Causing more than 700,000 human deaths each year, they account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases. While miniscule in size, vectors are capable of transmitting a whole host of infectious diseases, including Lyme disease and Zika in humans and blue tongue in livestock. That’s why we are investing in a range of projects that will help us understand and combat them better.
As well as collaborative research and innovation programmes, we work to support policy development, bringing diverse expertise into the heart of government, for example through our policy fellows programme. The programme embeds some of the UK’s brightest researchers into departments across government.
UKRI policy fellows help inform and shape effective public policy and its implementation. Fellows are seconded to UK government departments, devolved governments departments or What Works Centres, where they co-design their research plans to inform policy on a priority area linked to government needs.
We are also working closely with local government across the UK, for example through place-based innovation action plans and MoUs, and impact acceleration investments.
UKRI is an internationally recognised strength for the UK, with many other nations looking to emulate our success. We are uniquely positioned to support the system at a time of significant financial challenge at all levels, and to contribute to the government’s mission-led, citizen-focused agenda.
We will continue to work closely with the DSIT secretary of state and science minister, alongside our partners across the sector, to create a strong platform for an ambitious programme of research and innovation that delivers for the UK, now and in the future.
UKRI-funded projects deliver positive impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods. I am proud to have led an organisation over the last five years that empowers people to change the world for the better and I look forward to seeing it continue to rise to future challenges and make the most of the opportunities ahead.
Dame Ottoline Leyser is stepping down as chief executive of UKRI this summer