Moredun offsets cuts with collaborative working

Greater collaboration and closer working alliances between Scotland’s research establishments are being adopted as a means of fighting cuts in Scottish Government funding and the possible loss of EU research grants.

Speaking yesterday, Professor Julie Fitzpatrick, scientific director of the Moredun Research Institute, said that such an approach would not only help save costs but would also allow greater crossfertilisation from different disciplines while adding critical mass when pitching for global contracts.

She said that the farsighted decision taken by those running the Moredun Foundation in the 1990s to invest in land and building infrastructure on the outskirts of Edinburgh had provided the institute with a buffer against some of the financial strictures affecting Scotland’s research establishments.

This meant that rents from leasing out units on the Foundation’s Pentlands Science Park – along with the Moredun’s commercial operations – funded around a third of the institute’s £18 million budget, while Scottish Government funds accounted for £6.5m and project funding from Europe and other organisations accounted for the remaining third.

0 Prof Julie Fitzpatrick said Brexit was still a threat

However, Fitzpatrick said that continued cuts in Scottish Government funding and the possible closure of access to EU research grants due to Brexit worth around £2.5m still represented a threat to both work and staffing levels.

Stating that the institute had suffered funding cuts in 12 of the last 13 years, Fitzpatrick said that staffing levels funded by Scottish Government monies had dropped from a peak of 160 to 92 in recent years. This year’s 5.1 per cent cut in funding represented a drop of £330,000 – equating to the costs of five staff members.

Fresh from a meeting with the Scottish Parliament’s environment committee, she said there should be better recognition of the role played by Scotland’s research institutes, not only in conducting world-leading science but also in raising the country’s standing on the global stage.

Turning to the benefits of the partnership with the SRUC announced last month to set up a centralised veterinary surveillance hub for Scotland, she said it signalled a new way of working to create critical mass in selected areas of research – and improve the potential to create a world-class presence.

Chairman of the Moredun Foundation, Perthshire farmer Ian Duncan Miller, said that as a farmer-led and backed organisation, the foundation had always taken a practical and business-like approach to investment and fostering research.

He said most in the industry viewed the two organisations working closely together as a natural fit which would lead to benefits for both sides.