MH: I’m keen to hear your thoughts on how we can create the best possible research environment in Scotland – one that is collaborative, cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional, and cross-sectoral. So, my first question is, what do you think has led us to where we are today?

JF: Well, Scotland has a proud heritage across the sciences. We are a strong science nation, with many great scientific inventions having their origins in Scotland. Research and development (R&D) excellence continues to this day with our university sector performing very well in national assessments such as the REF (Research Excellence Framework) [1].

I’m particularly proud of our Research Institutes in Scotland – they’ve been consistently supported by the Scottish Government for over 100 years. Many of our Institutes were established to address strategically important research that they still contribute to at the present time. The fact that they continue to be very effective in delivering policy-focused research and attracting research income from a wide variety of sources into Scotland indicates how well our science is evolving.  

The long-term investment in our Institutes is something that distinguishes Scotland from the rest of the UK. And I think it has given us a strategic advantage – it means that the research we undertake has always been policy relevant, mission-driven, and impactful. And that’s before those words even became trendy!

The universities in Scotland have been equally successful, but they have to maintain a balance between basic fundamental research and strategic policy-focused research. I think that balance must be preserved. However, because of the way research funding is changing, universities are increasingly moving towards more mission-driven policy and impact-focused research with the aim of increasing their contribution to economic growth and global challenges.

“There is something distinctive about Scotland’s collaborative research culture compared to other parts of the UK.”

I say that from experience, having worked in other parts of the country – Scotland stands out as having a very well-connected scientific ecosystem. 

Research pooling [2] is a Scottish initiative that has led to that collegiality. For example, the first Research Pool was the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), and it was created because Scotland had several universities with outstanding work in physics, however the infrastructure and equipment needed for that research was extremely expensive. So, there was an initiative to bring parts of the physical sciences together, not only intellectually to share expertise, but also technically to share infrastructure. That, in turn, went on to stimulate a number of other research pooling initiatives, many of which remain today. Research Pooling helped strengthen collaboration in Scotland’s universities and institutes.

It’s important that research organisations collaborate when it is appropriate but also compete when it is appropriate. It is finding that balance: because competition improves research quality, and we know that in a non-competitive environment, quality can become compromised.

Although our research environment remains very strong, I think there’s much more that Scotland needs to achieve on innovation and commercialisation. This is essential to move our research into economic growth and wider societal benefit.

Scotland has a good history of producing spin-outs and early-stage businesses. However, the most successful countries can see this as underpinning companies of scale, which in turn support economic development and high value employment. Scotland sometimes struggles to retain some of our top-notch innovative scientists and the technologies they develop with these scientists drawn to Oxford, Cambridge, London, or internationally. Their expertise and technologies are frequently acquired elsewhere, and as a result we lose a vital element of the innovation pathway.

If we want to make that full transition from research and technology to innovation, and ultimately to economic growth, we need a much better understanding of how that pathway works. Technology is part of the story, but it isn’t the whole story. 

Some of the terminology can be tricky, because when we talk about “innovation”, it very often sounds as if we’re only talking about industry involvement or producing a product. But I believe innovation happens in many different areas. It involves processes, people, and communication. Whether we work in universities, institutes, or government, most of us know that funding the full process across technology readiness levels is one of the biggest challenges. As we move from basic research through to innovation and into product development, the costs rise significantly. And securing that later-stage funding is difficult but not impossible with some excellent initiatives supported by Scottish Enterprise agencies, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish National Investment Bank, Innovation Centres, and City and Regional Investment Accelerators.

If we really want to move the innovation agenda forward, we need to think much more about how we support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) [3] so they can grow into larger companies.  

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MH: When you compare Scotland to the rest of the UK, what do you see as the main difference? Do they have other policies or funding structures that set them apart? 

JF: Yes. In the relatively recent past, there has been a real push to increase UK spending on R&D. There have been targets set to increase the spend on R&D relative to GDP and we can compare our position with other countries on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [4] list. OECD is a forum of mostly high-income, developed economies where there is a positive correlation between GDP and R&D spend. 

Scotland receives R&D funding through the Barnett formula, which indirectly supports research in Scotland by determining the overall block grant provided to the Scottish Government. When the UK government increases funding, Scotland receives a population-based share, which can be allocated to Scottish research initiatives. The Scottish Government then decides how the R&D spend supports organisations and programmes across its research providers and across the country.

Scotland is very successful in competing and winning competitive research funding.  One source is  UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) [5], which encompasses seven different Research Councils and Innovate UK. All our academic organisations apply for funding to these highly competitive and scientifically renowned funding sources. 

“I’m delighted to say that, across most of the Research Councils, Scottish research organisations perform extremely well in attracting funding on a per capita basis. We bring in substantial funding through competitive grants.”

There was much disruption to EU funding during my time as the Chief Scientific Advisor and it was with great relief that the UK became an associated member of Horizon Europe from early 2024. This allowed UK researchers access to funding, and the opportunity to lead consortia, and to collaborate on projects as a fully associated member for the remainder of the programme, running to 2027. Horizon Europe funding complements the research funded by UKRI as it supports programmes which are focused on collaborative and policy priorities across the wide range of international partners.

Both Horizon Europe and UKRI are increasingly investing in large interdisciplinary programmes. I do think this is the way to go, and that means building bigger teams and ensuring that those big teams are diverse, not just in terms of background and discipline, but also in age, experience, and areas of expertise. 

This all ties back to the fact that, like most countries, we rely on a mix of funding sources. Within UKRI, we have Innovate UK, which aims to bring together public funding for research with private investment. But that’s an area where Scotland faces a challenge because there are fewer large private investors that other parts of the UK can draw on. We do have access to venture capital funds, but we are not as mature in that space as some of our competitors. 

The main competitive funders often do not provide the full economic cost (FEC) of research projects and programmes. So, it becomes a circle where only organisations that can afford to make up the full economic cost of conducting research are able to draw down certain funds. 

That brings us to the complexity that universities have always had: how funding is balanced between research and teaching, and between undergraduates and post-graduates, and between home-based students and international students.

Geopolitical events have affected student numbers from certain countries, but we can also see the impact of visa restrictions and migration targets, which are affecting the movement of international students.

In Scotland, we also rely on international staff, particularly EU individuals within our research organisations. On average, over 30% of our staff come from non-UK backgrounds; this is incredibly important for the strength and diversity of our research base. 

There are a couple of other funding elements I also wanted to mention. One is ARIA (the Advanced Research & Invention Agency) [6]. It is fully economically costed, and ARIA funding is designed to operate at an arm’s length from the government to encourage high-risk, high-reward research. ARIA aims to support scientists and engineers to pursue research that is too speculative, too hard, or too interdisciplinary to pursue elsewhere; that’s where some of the most exciting discoveries have emerged from in the past.

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MH: Funding is a key issue. We have a really encouraging and capacious mindset where we can collaborate and compete, but in an environment of limited resources, we might not be able to capitalise on that potential.

JF: Yes, and I think there needs to be continued reviews of the fundamentals of supporting research organisations. We need to ask: what is it we absolutely need to keep, and how are we going to maintain that? Student fees are probably one aspect. I think it’s fantastic that we have free university education in Scotland – it’s something to be proud of. But there must be a logical approach to assessing how sustainable it is, and how universities and institutes are going to be supported going forward. They need core funding to act as a platform from which to attract research funding, which is needed in turn to drive the innovation agenda. 

That’s one point. The second, which I thought about in my role as Chief Scientific Advisor, is the science-policy interface. I think there is much more that could be done to make that relationship clearer – not just to policymakers and politicians, but also for researchers. It’s about how we improve that two-way communication between those who produce research outputs and policy makers who use those outputs. 

One initiative that I’ve undertaken recently is working with Universities Scotland. We asked them to map their contribution to the Scottish Innovation Strategy [7] that was published a couple of years ago. It worked really well because it was presented to ministers and policymakers together indicating the universities’ current contributions and the inward investment that had been attracted, so it was a narrative about what was happening now to actually deliver the Innovation Strategy. The purpose of this communication was to highlight that the universities, politicians, and policymakers should be talking about this. It’s not enough to rely on the REF. It’s too infrequent and too detailed for policymakers to have the time to dig into all the REF documents.  

One of the initiatives I really like is the universities’ Scotland Beyond Net Zero (SBNZ) [8] programme, because it clearly aligns with major sustainable development goals. It fits with G20 priorities [9], with all the international frameworks and Scotland’s own climate change obligations.

“I like that the universities are coming together to make it clear to the government, what existing investment is already delivering. That’s got to be communicated in a way that’s quick, sharp, current, and frequent. The REF is too slow to support that sort of momentum. Research is moving so quickly, we need to get better at that sort of linkage and communication.”

Another initiative is one I helped to initiate within the Scottish Government called ARIs, Areas of Research Interest [10]. ARIs are where government departments in England, or government directorates, divisions or teams in Scotland, outline what their research needs are.

If they can identify and publish their research needs in clear, accessible formats, these can be shared with communities to help researchers understand what the Government is interested in.

Otherwise, policy people in government tend to rely on the people they know, defaulting to the same one-stop “policy shop.” If ARIs are published, researchers and research organisations can understand government needs much more effectively and transparently. 

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MH: It’s a great initiative that really enables universities to demonstrate value to the Scottish Government. 

JF: Exactly. We know that lots of R&D goes on in our business sector. But there is that opportunity again to engage the private sector if the government was more open about the areas that they’re particularly interested in.

MH: The Scottish Government is confronted with limited bandwidth, limited time, limited resources… 

JF: Absolutely. That’s why information and communications have got to be short and sharp. There needs to be a much better understanding by our government, senior policymakers, and politicians of what’s actually happening in our own research ecosystem. 

You also need to think about the gaps. What are the researchable questions? How do you conduct research? Increasingly, you need interdisciplinary teams, like the four ARCs [11] we have in Scotland, to bring together different capabilities to tackle major challenges. 

To do that, we need a strong skills base coming through. Not just from universities and institutes but also from colleges. We need to ensure that school leavers have opportunities for apprenticeships, technical roles, and hands-on pathways because employment is essential for economic growth. It can be directly linked to reducing child poverty; family employment is one of the strongest protective factors, although not the only one. 

I worry that some of the skills we need for science and innovation are needed now. We don’t have the luxury of waiting 10 years. We can have a 10-year plan because that’s a good thing to have, but we also need a two-year plan and immediate action. 

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MH: In recent years, we’ve seen a change in discourse in how expertise is being represented – sometimes described as the “tyranny of experts”: a position that articulates that we don’t need more expert commentary and advice; instead, we have gut instincts that can drive us. This discourse sits alongside a strong criticism of universities for having become woke, especially in the US. When I think about the environment we exist in right now, I see these two currents as a real challenge for research. 

JF: I agree. It is challenging, and it is happening. I went to an EU meeting on the theme of “democratic backsliding,” the idea that democracies are weakening and autocracies are becoming stronger, which comes with a disconnect between the truth as we see it: science, evidence, information, and the rise in misinformation and disinformation.

I think we need to defend the scientific method: collecting high-quality data, evidence, analysis, interpretation, communication of the results, and communication of any uncertainty. That, to me, is science: methodology, not opinion. It can be difficult to explain to people, but I think we need to be clear about evidence where we possibly can.

What matters is, when we communicate with policymakers, with the public, with anyone, we need to be as clear as possible about the evidence. There are lots of examples where evidence-based policy has been much more successful than decisions based on rhetoric or personal agendas. We need to keep that going and reinforce the value of evidence. 

MH: Thank you so much, Julie.