On Thursday morning, the UK Government announced it had agreed a deal for the UK to rejoin the European Union's Horizon Europe research programme.
Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation and is considered to be the world's largest initiative for research collaboration.
Over the years, the programme has provided hundreds of millions of Euros in funding for 3D printing-centred research projects, with the most recent example a 6.7 million EUR investment in the MADE-3D project which has a focus on multi-material designs.
Now the UK has rejoined the programme, the country's researchers and innovators will be able to apply for grants and bid to take part in projects with the assurance that the UK will be participating as a fully associated member for the remaining life of the programme through to 2027.
On the back of this news, TCT reached out to several UK-based researchers, innovators, industrial leaders and trade associations to gauge their reaction.
David Wimpenny, Chief Technologist, NCAM, MTC
Over the last four decades, EU funded projects have played a critical role in the development of AM technology. This has led to key advances in machinery, software, materials and applications that have significantly benefitted the UK’s high value manufacturing sector. The end to the uncertainty over the UK’s long-term status in the Horizon programme will enable the UK’s AM research and industrial community to plan with confidence for the future, and enable our country to join the governance of the EU programmes.
Professor Moataz Attallah, Director, The Advanced Materials Processing Lab. (AMPLAB), Director of Research & Knowledge Transfer, University of Birmingham
For years, the additive manufacturing sector in Europe maintained its leadership thanks to the generous support it has been receiving through the EU-funded programmes. The UK’s strong participation in the previous programmes created opportunities for businesses and research and technology organisations to engage and jointly develop novel innovations and transfer knowledge to the end-users. These programmes also provide an excellent opportunity for training the future generations of additive manufacturing engineers and scientists through the doctoral training networks, and for attracting foreign talents from all over the world through the Marie-Sklodowska Curie fellowships.
I am sure that the entire UK academic community wholeheartedly welcomes the news of the UK re-joining Horizon Europe and looks forward to working again with our European partners on maintain Europe’s leadership in this sector.
Josh Dugdale, Head of AM UK
It is great news that the UK has rejoined the Horizon Europe science and research programme. This decision will do a great deal to strengthen the UK ties with the EU in the field of research and innovation. This decision also signifies the UK’s commitment to advancing scientific knowledge and addressing challenges together in collaboration with the wider scientific community. It is a very positive step forward for the UK.
By working together with our European partners, UK companies, universities, and research organisations will now have greater opportunities to access funding, lead projects, and increase their influence across the global research and development landscape. This is a fantastic opportunity for UK businesses and organisations to showcase their innovation and expertise on the world stage.
Rupert Jones, Managing Director, Renishaw plc – Medical, Renishaw Neuro Solutions Ltd
This week's announcement that the UK is rejoining the Horizon scientific programme is great news for Renishaw and other UK businesses committed to R&D. This positive step provides a framework and potential funding for collaborative programmes with European partners. For Renishaw Neuro Solutions, it means we can explore innovative therapy developments where our direct drug delivery technology can be used to treat brain conditions that traditionally have been difficult to treat.
This funding is most useful to small biotech companies to generate early stage pre-clinical and clinical safety and performance evidence ahead of larger scale trials. These steps are usually required to convince large pharma companies to progress novel therapeutics and drug delivery systems to later stage trials and commercial application.
The collaborative nature of Horizon grants means that there will now be greater opportunity to progress other, close to market, pipeline projects with cross-discipline European partners.
Carl Diver, Professor of Innovative Manufacturing, Manchester Metropolitan University & Director - PrintCity MMU
We are delighted that The UK has signed up to associate to Horizon Europe, this will give us certainty that has been missing for a number of years now. In the last few years UK partners could not lead projects and the rolling guarantees didn’t give confidence or certainty to our partners which made it difficult to be fully engaged in bids. Today’s announcement means that we can now lead bids again and from PrintCity perspective we are keen to do just that. We have an amazing facility with state of the art 3D printing equipment and we are looking to partner with researchers across Europe to address the grand challenges of our time.
Mark Chester, Product Development Specialist, Manchester Metropolitan University
We are very excited at the prospect of collaborating with leading researchers, designers and engineers across Europe on advancing the field of additive manufacturing, DFAM and materials development.
Prof Phill Dickens MBE, Founder, Added Scientific
When we were at Loughborough University we decided to stop doing EU projects as they had become so bureaucratic. There were many problems:
- You had to submit a very detailed research proposal which stated all the deliverables and milestones. However, research is treading into the unknown and so if you know what result you will get and when by definition it is not research!
- If you did not keep to the deliverables and milestones then you were given a hard time and so there was an incentive to ignore any results that were much more interesting but would take the project in a different direction.
- Some of the projects have many partners (I seem to remember the last one we did had about 40 different organisations involved) and so meetings become a nightmare!
Many of the EU engineering research projects I saw were fairly low quality. I had the distinct impression that people applied for EU projects because they could not put together a good quality proposal that would be funded by EPSRC (Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council). That last comment might ruffle a few feathers but on the whole I believe it is true.
If it was my decision, I would not rejoin but put the money the government would allocate to support Horizon projects into EPSRC and Innovate UK because the quality is better and the projects much more easy to manage.
