HOW THE EU HAS ENRICHED WALES CULTURALLY AND ECONOMICALLY...
of energy such as wind, solar or tidal power.
The work is co-funded via the EU, a UK research council – EPSRC – and industry.
“This is a very important area for the future and we have large links with companies like Tata. The situation is so uncertain that some EU partners don’t want to collaborate and they certainly don’t want us to lead projects.” scientists not being included in EU collaborative grant applications.” Professor Crunelli from Sicily moved to the UK in 1981 and to Wales in 1991 when he was offered the first chair of neuroscience at Cardiff University.
At Cardiff he has won research grants totalling more than £20m for his work on the mechanism of sleep and childhood/juvenile epilepsy. Over the years he says that half his research team have come from other EU countries.
He works closely with CUBRIC – the university’s world-leading brain imaging centre built with the help of £4.6m of ERDF funding. It is now supported by grants worth £3.9m under the Horizon 2020 programme.
Professor Crunelli is concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on academic networks. At present he is participating in a €3m International Training Networks scheme, under the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, that will train 15 PhD students from Wales, Germany, France, Italy, Norway and the Netherlands – a grant that was awarded only two weeks before the EU referendum in 2016.