Professor Ulrike Tillmann: Government’s failure to deliver the £300m would be “a betrayal”
“Hundreds of millions of pounds of maths funding is at risk,” London Mathematical Society President Professor Ulrike Tillmann writes in a new article for Times Higher Education.
Professor Tillmann was referring to the recent hearing of the Commons’ Science and Technology Committee during which Dame Ottoline Leyser, Chief Executive of UKRI, said that the money had not yet been received despite the Government’s commitment. In his response, Science Minister George Freeman was equivocal as to when – and indeed if – the remaining funds would be forthcoming.
Professor Tillmann wrote:
“In January 2020, the government pledged £300 million of new funding to “fund experimental and imaginative mathematical sciences research by the very best global talent over the next five years”. But Dame Ottoline revealed that while £124 million has been delivered, the balance is unaccounted for. These are maths’ missing millions.
No pot of funding has been marked out for mathematical sciences and ringfenced. And UKRI is only committed to supporting mathematical sciences by “juggling” funding from across a wide range of sources as part of “balancing funding across the whole research and innovation system.”
This is disappointing, to say the least.”
In the article, Professor Tillmann pointed out that the Covid pandemic has “strengthened the case for more mathematical sciences funding”, evidenced by the mathematical roots of modelling graphs, cutting-edge technologies and logistics for the rollout of the vaccine.
Mathematics also “lies behind our most exciting and urgent technological developments including artificial intelligence, driverless cars and quantum computers. But it fuels and infuses the social sciences too,” she wrote.
The additional funding would also provide extra opportunities for the study of mathematics at all levels, widening access for more women, people of colour and LGBTQ+ people – groups that are currently severely under-represented in the field.
Failure to deliver the balance of the promised £300m in ringfenced funding for the mathematical sciences would “be a betrayal of those that started years-long programmes of study, who will now be forced to scrabble for the funds that will allow them to see that work through to fruition”.
The Government must keep its promise in order to demonstrate its commitment “to this most foundational of subjects”.
Read the full article here.
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