Welcome to this week’s Research Agenda. New science minister Chris McDonald has set out his stall on research and innovation – are we in for a new era where industrial collaboration gets prioritised and the government’s driving principle is for value to remain in the UK?

Plus: This week’s essay sees our own James Coe make the case that investment zones do not make for good innovation policy, while Haldane has been reflecting on ARIA’s political tangles. Over on the news pages, Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram has written to his old pal Andy Burnham about research cuts, the UK has a freshly minted space strategy, and there’s new data on public trust in scientists.

Michael Salmon, Editor

michael@researchagenda.news

Durable national value

Every instance of a scientific breakthrough being commercialised abroad is a “lost opportunity” for the UK. This was the statement of intent which science minister Chris McDonald chose to foreground in last week’s speech to the annual Universities UK conference. Of all the points he made, it was this through-line of retaining the value of research investment on these shores which came across most vividly.

Arguably the most telling aspect of the intervention was the minister’s repeated insistence that this new robust approach had support from the very top of government – and that this explained the join-up of science and business in Andy Burnham’s reorganisation of departments and portfolios.

We’ve been here before, of course. Some might see the last government’s “science superpower” framing as a comparable attempt to make the UK’s international strength in research serve a more national purpose, if only rhetorically. But the new Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade looks set to do this in a wholly different way: one more focused on resilience and industrial collaboration, and therefore necessarily more interventionist on the part of the government.

Exact policy implications remain to be seen. But Research England executive chair Jessica Corner’s call at the same conference for a “third age” of commercialisation – one based on UK institutions collaborating rather than competing, in the service of “durable national value” – felt very of the moment.

Chris McDonald’s appointment to the reconfigured science brief raised the question of whether he would simply be one more minister within a business department more focused on industrial strategy than the intricacies of research and innovation policy – or perhaps just continue to implement the reforms which his predecessor Patrick Vallance had put in motion. But the indications we got last week were very much of a minister with his own agenda, and it’s one the research sector will be thinking about carefully.

Innovation policy needs imagination – not constant repackaging of the enterprise zone dream

One government after another has stuck with this economic orthodoxy, even as the labels change. It’s time for a new approach.

James Coe  ·  Associate Editor, Research Agenda

The week on the wire – every item reported in full on the site.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has announced £95m for the Henry Royce Institute and £67.7m for the Rosalind Franklin Institute over the next five years. Science minister Chris McDonald visited the latter to inspect a new cutting-edge microscope.

UKRI has begun market engagement for a tender to provide an “accessible, searchable and filterable” online register of patents associated with UK higher education providers.

The Innovation and Research Caucus released a report on the development of a matrix to measure an innovation’s maturity beyond technology readiness level alone. The project team is inviting interested parties to become beta testers.

The Scottish government has launched the twelfth round of its CivTech public sector innovation programme, with £5.7m planned in investment across six new challenges.

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council executive chair Anne Ferguson-Smith wrote to the Commons science committee with an overview of UKRI’s investment and initiatives related to agriculture and food security.

The Royal Society announced the 2026 cohort of its University Research Fellowships – 35 early career researchers in UK and Ireland will be awarded up to £1.87m over eight years.

Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy took evidence from researchers from the Alan Turing Institute, King’s College London and the National Quantum Computing Centre in a session about AI and quantum computing in the national security context.

Worth your time from Wonkhe and across the wider community.

Why AI will fail without the humanities and social sciences  Hetan Shah · UKRI Substack

The right to apply  Kirsty Grainger · Another Way Of Looking At It

NSF moves to overhaul funding approach in line with White House priorities  Dan Garisto · Nature

Is another future for English higher education possible?  John Blake · The Post-18 Project

Where research policy made the news this week.

Financial Times   Gordon Brown: Innovation is the answer to Britain’s elusive growth problem

The Guardian   ‘Immature playground boasting’: Mathematicians uneasy at OpenAI’s latest scalp

The Times   Science and maths degrees offer most value to the nation, says minister

The Observer   MoD revealed to be funding research into ‘sun-dimming’ technology

LBC   Why is Britain failing to turn world leading science into world beating companies?

EUobserver   Europe built its medical science around male bodies – and women are paying the price

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