Reimagining R&D

As CaSE turns 40, we are looking ahead and exploring what the future holds for R&D in the UK.

CaSE has started a piece of work, ‘Reimagining R&D’, that seeks to imagine a future we’d like to see for the UK R&D sector, and identify the steps needed today, and in the years to come, to get there. The work will draw on the breadth of CaSE’s membership, the R&D sector, and public opinion.

New and emerging trends in the global and domestic landscape are likely to impact the UK R&D system in the future. Changes to the geopolitical context, the impacts of climate change, technological development, and the public legitimacy of R&D, to name a few, present both challenges and opportunities for R&D.

How do we take advantage in an era of increasingly automated discovery? How do we collaborate in an increasingly geopolitically fragmented world? How do we secure public legitimacy of R&D in the face of deteriorating trust? What will these trends mean for funding, skills and infrastructure?   

For four decades CaSE has championed R&D through our policy advocacy. Our 40th anniversary next year provides a timely moment for us to consider questions such as these, and what R&D system we want and need as a society.