I have just returned from Brussels where I led a delegation of university leaders as part of a Scottish Council for Development and Industry mission. Whilst the UK may have left the European Union, the need for UK universities to retain links with our counterparts across Europe has never been more important. Almost every key challenge and opportunity facing the world, from achieving net zero to harnessing Artificial Intelligence will be addressed through collaboration making it vitally important to support research across borders.
The scale of the resource is significant but it’s where the investment goes that matters. It funds vital research that changes people’s lives, creates highly skilled jobs, supports emerging industries within our regions and those research and industry clusters then attract further investment from overseas. Horizon builds deep international partnerships across universities and industry. Within Dundee, I can see the connections between past European research investment in my institution’s research strengths into the cluster of life sciences we have in the city and across Tayside.
A further example of Horizon’s importance is a research programme led by Professor Mel Woods. Recognising how we use the earth’s natural resources matters more than ever, Horizon 2020 funded a consortium, led from Dundee of 18 partners, including the Met Office and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. They explored the potential of community-based environmental monitoring. Her team trained 20,000 food growers across 13 countries that resulted in 516 million soil data entries that could be compared. One of the key breakthroughs was farmers in the Canary Islands reducing their use of water for irrigation by 30%. This sort of project with the potential for harnessing climate action at a continental scale will be key to dealing with the climate emergency.
