• Question: what will brexit mean for engineering/ science

    Asked by Derp o' Derpington to Dawn, James, Sarah, Sylvain, Tomas, Vaanu on 8 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Sylvain Jamais

      Sylvain Jamais answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      Mmm… politics… It is going to take a while to figure out what the impact is. The vote has made the pound weaker meaning that British goods are cheaper to export which might help, but then raw materials are usually priced in dollars so that probably cancels out… I am really unconvinced Brexit will do any good to anything, but I’m French so maybe I would say that… I am just crossing fingers for the impact to be small.

    • Photo: Sarah Hampson

      Sarah Hampson answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      I’ve heard this question discussed so often at work & at conferences. Like Sylvain said, it’s going to take more time to get a proper idea of the impact of Brexit.

      Right now, the EU funds a significant amount of research here in the UK. After Brexit, we’ll lose a lot of this funding & it will be up to the UK government to decide if it wants to sort out more funding for us to make up for that lost, or to prioritise other things instead.

      The Brexit impact on the engineering/science industry is different to those on research- it involves what Sylvain said about export prices, plus other things

    • Photo: Dawn Gillies

      Dawn Gillies answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      As I work in research, I’m quite worried about it but we just have to wait it out and see what happens – we work with other researchers from across the EU and we have some funding from the EU. I really don’t want to lose this joint research because it’s really useful – the more people there are with different ideas to work on a problem the better a solution we can come up with.

      I have a lot of colleagues from the EU who are looking into other jobs outside of the UK because they are worried about their right to work – we really don’t want to lose them, they’re great! So for now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will stay.

    • Photo: Vaanathi Sundaresan

      Vaanathi Sundaresan answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      A lot! It is so sad that a single political decision can affect eng/science very much. First and foremost, research grants by european research councils and societies, then it could be funding policies for students, visa issues (now I know that visa is needed between UK and EU, but that is susceptible change with this) and work hour regulations .. As I said, a lot!

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