FST JOURNAL

After the presentations, the speakers engaged in a Q&A with the audience on issues including what the next great global facility might be and which global problems should be prioritised when thinking about building new infrastructure.

Do not start a new national laboratory unless you can fund it properly. There is a danger of picking on things without the proper funding resource and this has been a sequential problem with lots of institutes being set up without adequate funding or structure. However, in terms of what’s next, there is the question of what we are going to do around quantum, engineering biology and AI (Artificial Intelligence). It will be important to evaluate our current laboratories and consider what might be worth changing to make room for something new.

So, what is the next great global facility? This is a difficult question to answer but we do need a process to start thinking about it. Take a potential quantum facility. Could this work be undertaken by a current institution or should a new one be built? Either way, it will be a political process with many partners likely to be involved. In any case, it is always enjoyable to speculate on what shiny new things we would like but the real question is why do we need them? Do we want to put someone on Mars? Do we want to make quantum discoveries? Do we want to build infrastructure around the energy transition? What is the problem that we are trying to solve and what do we need to solve it?  We can also do a lot with what we already have by scaling those things up.

Responding to audience questions including one on balancing the tension between the role of science and exploitation through the different institutions we have, one panellist said that a lot of public laboratories are government funded in some way but it is clear that the lack of funding that has gone into the public analyst laboratories is causing a problem because it is having a knock on effect on capability, skills and flow of skills. There is always a tension between what public roles and private sector expectations are. However, if you have clearly defined roles and missions, then the two don’t cross.

This point was countered by another panellist who felt that the Public Sector Research Establishments (PSREs) term had been used too loosely in discussions. They said that the really important thing is knowing what we want from these different research organisations. There are such a variety of laboratory institutions across a complex landscape that is hard to logically categorise them. However, there should be a coordinated effort to understand what the centres can deliver, and how they can play together. 

What is the picture in the USA? Vannevar Bush was the architect of the National Science Foundation but the national science foundation is a small part of the funding for public sector science in the US. The budget of NASA and the National Institution of Health are much bigger for example. It is done in different ways and there is a strength in having this variety. Having a portfolio of university labs and national labs is useful and important. 

The National Laboratory landscape is complex and we mustn’t try to simplify this too much. Having a mix of academic, national and industrial science bases is important and this was key during the pandemic, for example. We do however, need a view of what we have got and where the industrial, academic and national strengths are. The UK could do better in this area. Did the Covid 19 crisis show how important national labs were? Yes. Science comes to the fore in a crisis. However we need an understanding and appreciation of the laboratory skill set on a day to day basis too. We shouldn’t wait for a crisis to work out what we need.