Money money money

Money - goes the saying - makes the world go round. Well, much as anyone with even a passing acquaintance with gravity and Newton’s famous laws may take umbrage at this, the fact remains that for R&D this trite statement is largely inescapable.

Science is expensive - if there is no financial backing for any given piece of research then it just can’t happen. Equipment, staff, consumables, premises - just the very tip of an expenses iceberg that extends very deeply indeed. And as technologies and capabilities grow so do the costs.

How the UK scientific community approaches this and attempts to make its scientific ambition tally with its financial reality will be the major factor in our ability to perform at a global level.

In his recent budget George Osbourne announced that the Government will put its hand in its pocket and pump an extra £100m of capital spending into science and engineering. The cash will go to projects deemed priorities by the Science and Engineering Research Councils - £90m will be split between the national research campuses at Daresbury, Norwich and Cambridge (£80m) and the Isis neutron source at Harwell (£10m).£10m will go to fund new technologies used in spacecraft systems, along with some changes to the Outer Space Act which it is hoped will make the UK space sector more competitive.

Broad smiles, pats on back, and no doubt some expensive celebratory lunches in the halls of Westminster - but is it really enough? Of course it’ll help, £100m after all is not to be sniffed at, and yes it is a relief to see that at the moment the infamous ‘ring fencing’ of the science budget holds firm - but really, for the price of two footballers can the nation truly rest easy in the knowledge that we are doing all we can for science?

After all, this recent bump in spending comes hot on the heels of a £1.4bn cut in science spending at the end of last year. Labs country-wide are struggling to make ends meet, and this extra money will prove insignificant - indeed inaccessible - for the majority of them.

So what then, is to be done? Well the fact is we as a nation have less money to spend. And while it is true that a pound spent on R&D, even in a time of economic stagnation (in fact, especially in a time of economic stagnation) is potentially at least two pounds earned down the line - governments can’t be relied upon to splash the cash. There are of course other routes of funding - charity, private sector science companies etc - but it is venture capitalists, a group now firmly entrenched in the vocabulary of all those with ambitions of a start-up, that could well boom as government spending dwindles.

We managed to track one of these financial alchemists down and on p31 we give you the insider info on what it is they seek from scientists seeking investment. Of course it is not the answer for many projects - but for work that has some commercial ambition, the VC’s can be a helping hand indeed.