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A leading German member of the European Parliament urged the EU to sever all scientific relations with Russia, stepping up pressure from Berlin to use science as a diplomatic weapon against Moscow.
Engaging citizens in research will be a big priority for the new Horizon Europe funding programme. Horizon Europe includes a €2 million research call for recommendations to strengthen societal trust in science, research and innovation, while the programme is also seeking to encourage more public participation in scientific research.
Spain has set out to improve the lives of its researchers after years of hand to mouth existence and a brain drain that has significantly weakened the public research sector. A reform of a 2011 law will see young researchers getting permanent contracts, recognition of experience gained abroad and new labour rights. At the same time, there will be increased public spending on research.
Discussions are underway in Brussels over whether Russia should be cut out of future Horizon Europe projects after president Vladimir Putin recognised two separatist-held parts of Ukraine as sovereign states and requested permission from parliament to send in troops on a mission.
The UK has launched a research and development competition with South Korea, the latest in a string of recently announced collaborations with countries outside the EU. It comes as Brussels announces that it has entered official Horizon Europe association talks with South Korea and New Zealand.
Slovenian universities and research stakeholders are decrying government interference in the appointment of a new head of the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS). The agency's management board appointed cardiologist Mitja Lainščak as acting director on Saturday 28 January, a few days after the government replaced four members of the board who disagreed with that decision, and had instead twice proposed economist Lidija Tičar Padar for the job.
As he was re-confirmed on February 9 as head of France's biggest research organisation, Antoine Petit floated a few attention-getting ideas in parliament - such as the possibility of starting a television channel for science.
As the first year of Horizon Europe draws to a close, Science|Business gathered feedback from an online survey and meetings with its member organisations resulting in recommendations on how to make the next six years of Horizon Europe even better.
France is now working with the European Commission and science and university associations to push for a new system of evaluating research in Europe, launching the Paris Call on research assessment.
President Biden's efforts to remake US R&D policy took a hit Monday, as his chief science adviser, Eric Lander, unexpectedly resigned following an internal White House investigation of claims he had bullied members of his staff.
The vast majority of research-focused EU bodies have never had a top leader from central or eastern Europe finds a new report that is demanding "affirmative action" to broaden the distribution of jobs across the bloc. This is a problem across the whole EU apparatus and risks bolstering political parties in central and eastern Europe that are hostile to Brussels, the report warns.
EU member states have voted to break the political deadlock that has been holding back the European Innovation Council's (EIC's) 2022 work programme.
Public money contributes to the publication of around 2.5 million papers in scientific journals each year - yet as taxpayers most of us have access to just a fraction of that output.
Disagreements persist over the use of lump sum funding in Horizon Europe, as the European Commission gears up for broader implementation over the next couple of years. At a meeting organised by the European Parliament's panel for the future of science and technology (STOA), Horizon Europe rapporteur Christian Ehler MEP debated the pros and cons of lump sum funding, with policymakers in the Commission. Meanwhile, research stakeholders continue to call for caution and a slower rollout of the new system.
A number of national research organisations have been taken aback by the urgency of a request by the European Commission to appoint representatives to negotiate a new research assessment system in Europe.
The US has unveiled a range of measures to make it easier to attract people in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, in a further effort to move away from the exclusionary rhetoric of the Trump era. They include a new initiative to facilitate researcher exchange, and a host of tweaks to visa rules to make entry easier.
Germany's Jülich Supercomputing Centre has added a quantum computer to its existing high performance computing infrastructure, enabling the centre to get involved in practical applications of quantum computing at a very early stage, as the technology moves out the lab and into commercial use.
Start-ups and SMEs promised equity funding by the European Innovation Council (EIC) will have to wait "a number of months into 2022" for the financing, as the European Commission struggles with setting up the fund under Horizon Europe.
Switzerland-based early career scientists awarded funding by European Research Council (ERC) grants may have to move to another country to do their research.
The EU urgently needs better intelligence about China's science and technology system to avoid being taken advantage of, warns a new report.
What are the main six debates to watch this year in European research policy?
Horizon Europe Missions will reach full steam this year. The €1.9 billion two-year plan for the missions saw the light of day last autumn, with the European Commission launching the first calls in the last weeks of 2021.
What the Manhattan Project's scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer and his physicist-colleagues went through after the war holds lessons for us today, hoping for the end of our own generation's global crisis.
With the COVID-19 crisis still underway and a climate crisis looming, an international group of senior researchers is pushing the world's biggest economies to reform the way they manage collaboration on emerging technologies. In coming years, argues a group participant, David Delpy, professor of medical photonics at University College London, the world risks conflict over who controls and benefits from a range of emerging technologies from climate control to 6G wireless networks.
Countries and universities are once again engaged in a war for talent over researchers, entrepreneurs and students as the world emerges in fits and starts from a pandemic-induced slowdown in international migration.
The EU's proposed artificial intelligence act fails to fully take into account the recent rise of an ultra-powerful new type of AI, meaning the legislation will rapidly become obsolete as the technology is deployed in novel and unexpected ways. Foundation models trained on gargantuan amounts of data by the world's biggest tech companies, and then adapted to a wide range of tasks, are poised to become the infrastructure on which other applications are built.
A row between the European Parliament and the Council over whether unspent money in the previous Horizon 2020 EU research and innovation programme should be rolled into the 2022 Horizon Europe budget remains unresolved - and could repeat itself again next year.
Unlike many valuable resources, real-time data is both abundant and growing rapidly. But it also needs to be handled with great care.
A patent waiver will not help guarantee COVID-19 vaccines equity around the world and instead richer countries should back compulsory licensing, says a new report by the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA).
