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UK and Switzerland enter into a research agreement.

 

The UK and Switzerland, two scientific powerhouses excluded from the EU's €96bn Horizon Europe funding programme for political reasons, will sign an agreement today to strengthen bilateral cooperation in research and innovation.

«We are pushing international collaboration wherever we can get it». Exclusion from associate membership of Horizon is harming science in both countries. «We have seen some 15 per cent of top European professors leaving the UK,» said Freeman. Swiss public spending on R&D in 2021 was 16 per cent lower than in 2019, the Federal Statistical Office said.

The fall was due mainly to the country's forced departure from Horizon. However, the loss of British and Swiss collaboration also damages European science. Researchers in the region have set up the Stick to Science campaign to change the EU's mind. «Nine of the ten best universities in Europe are in the UK or Switzerland,» said Leitner, citing the QS World University Rankings.

Under the agreement, the two countries' central public funding agencies, UK Research and Innovation and the Swiss National Science Foundation, will invest in joint projects in bioscience and medicine, computing and artificial intelligence, and space. Next year, Switzerland will launch a quantum initiative, and it sees the UK as a natural partner. Freeman said another shared initiative the two countries could explore would be financing and insuring the global space economy, with hubs in London and Zurich. The MoU will build on an extensive base of existing collaboration.

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  1. Anonymous10 November 2022 at 22:38

    The partnership between the UK and Switzerland needs to continue. There are a lot of things that were hurt/stopped because of Brexit and should continue and this is one of them. We all need much more R&D as a lot of innovations and important discoveries come from this field.

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