LETTER FROM PROFESSOR ALAN J THORPE, CHAIRMAN, RCUK, TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE: 14 DECEMBER 2009

  Thank you for your letter of 7 December regarding points raised during the oral evidence session to the Science and Technology Committee on 2 December.

  I have asked my colleague, Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), to respond directly to you with answers to the first question.

  In response to your second question, please see Annex 1 for details of how the UK has compared to other countries when competing for European Research Council funding. One pillar of the current Framework Programme (FP7) is the `Ideas Programme' and the flagship component of this programme is the European Research Council.

  The European Research Council (ERC) is the first European funding body set up to support investigator-driven frontier research and is operationally similar to the UK Research Councils. Its main aim is to stimulate scientific excellence by supporting and encouraging the very best, truly creative scientists, scholars and engineers to be adventurous and take risks in their research. The scientists are encouraged to go beyond established frontiers of knowledge and the boundaries of disciplines.

  The ERC therefore complements other funding activities in Europe, such as those of the national research funding agencies, and the UK sees it as a useful way of recognising excellent researchers and increasing their international profile. Calls have been organised to address two different communities so far—Starting Independent Researcher Grants aimed at postdoctoral researchers between two and 10 years of completion of their PhD theses, and Advanced Investigator Grants aimed at researchers who are leaders in their field.

  Since its inception, the UK has consistently led in Europe in winning funds from the ERC. The most recent results for the last round of Advanced Investigator Grants shows that the UK is not only the most attractive host location for these grants, but UK nationals are also the most successful in winning these grants. Further information on the ERC can be found at the following link: http://erc.europa.eu/index.cfm

  I am happy to clarify the process regarding preparation of responses to Committee questions or correspondence, and whether we clear responses with BIS. We sometimes discuss responses and share final versions with officials in BIS, or other Government departments, where appropriate. We are not required to request sign-off from the department. In the case of the replies to this year's Annual Report and Accounts, we shared the replies with BIS officials for their information only.

Professor Alan J Thorpe

Chair, Research Councils UK

December 2009

  Full figures on funded grants are made available at:

http://erc.europa.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.display&topicID=165


Annex 1

UK PARTICIPATIONS IN FP7 AND FP6
  (Data summary courtesy of Genevra Kirby, International Science and Innovation Unit, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills).

1 As each successful project has multiple partners from different countries, it is expected that the same contract will count against several countries. As a result, the sum of UK, Germany and France lines in this table is greater than the total number of contract for all countries.

PARTICIPATION BY ORGANISATION ACTIVITY TYPE FOR FP6

% participation by type	Higher Education	Research Organisations	Industry	Others
UK	55.4	14.5	18.4	11.7
Germany	31.5	30.2	25.8	12.5
France	18.8	39.8	23.7	17.7
All Countries	35.6	27.7	18.7	18.0