What is the £300 million?
In January 2020, the UK Government announced £300 million of additional funding to “fund experimental and imaginative mathematical sciences research by the very best global talent over the next five years”.
According to UK Research and Innovation, the new investment “is for research projects, fellowships and doctoral awards where the research focus is in mathematical sciences as well as providing additional funding to the Heilbronn Institute to support PhD students and research, and to the Isaac Newton Institute and International Centre for Mathematical Sciences to enable increased participation.”
It includes:
£15 million of studentship funding from Autumn 2020 for about 200 additional students in mathematical sciences
A small grants scheme with award grants up to £80,000
Funding for research grants and fellowships
The funding is targeted at the breadth of the mathematical sciences, including pure and applied mathematics, statistics and operational research.
Why is it important?
Funding for mathematical sciences research has had its ups and downs over the last decade. The budget for UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) increased from £866m in 2012/13 to £1,211m in 2020/21. However, for most of this period, some funding for mathematical sciences research was actually decreasing.
From 2012/13 to 2017/18, mathematics consistently had the lowest capability funding of any discipline. For example, engineering and ICT were usually 3x higher. But, to some extent, this is likely to reflect the higher overheads of those subjects. However, capability funding for mathematics decreased from £24.6m in 2012/13 to £19.0m in 2017/18, a reduction of 23%. By way of comparison over the same period, capability funding for engineering increased 7% and ICT remained flat.
Discoveries in mathematics drive innovation across all areas of academia and industry, including AI, biotech, computing and data encryption, to name just a few. As the foundation of subjects like ICT and engineering, mathematics lies behind our most exciting and urgent technological developments including artificial intelligence, driverless cars and quantum computers. The £300 million pledge, set to be spread over five years, would not only reverse the cuts of the last decade but go further, putting mathematics on a more even footing with engineering and ICT.
In addition, the extra places for students created by this funding would provide new opportunities for more talent to engage with mathematics. The extra places could provide opportunities for more women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+ people to study mathematical sciences, helping to change the model of what a mathematician looks like.
Importantly, the funding announcement represented an understanding at the highest levels of government that maths matters – and a tacit acceptance that research into mathematical sciences has been hard done by in the past.
Learn more about why mathematics is so important through our "Why Maths Matters” case studies:
So where is the money?
On 15 June, during an evidence session of the Commons’ Science and Technology Committee, the Chief Executive of UKRI admitted that just £124 million of the additional funding has been delivered.
But the remaining £176 million is unaccounted for.
During the same evidence session, Science Minister George Freeman MP failed to make a clear commitment on when or whether the additional funding would be delivered.
You can watch the full session here, with the questioning on the £300m funding beginning at 12:01.
Writing for Times Higher Education, LMS President Professor Ulrike Tillmann warned that without this funding, research into mathematical sciences – which provide the foundation for subjects like engineering and ICT – will suffer.
“We need expert brains interrogating the fundamentals and applying creative new thinking to the puzzles that our greatest minds have grappled with for centuries”, she wrote. “Only then will we discover the kinds of new approaches and new mathematics that can drive innovation across the STEM spectrum and beyond.”
What can we do about it?
The Protect Pure Maths campaign is working hard to keep this issue at the top of the agenda. Show your support by writing to your MP using the template here. You can find your local MP here.
You can also use # mathsmissingmillions to join the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn.
