Brian Cox attacks ‘devastating’ STFC cuts as postdocs slashed

One of the UK’s best-known scientists, Brian Cox, has condemned “devastating” cuts to physics funding after major reductions in postdoctoral research support were communicated to universities.

The professor of physics at the University of Manchester warned that plans to save £162 million from the budget of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) over the next four years will harm universities and the wider economy.

It comes as theoretical research groups were told that funding for early career posts will fall by two-thirds over the next four years.

In an email from the STFC sent on 23 March, research leaders were informed that the amount available to fund postdoc positions would drop significantly because of the cuts. 

“Under the constraints of the current financial climate, the panel was only able to fund 172 academics (up from 164 in 2022) and to award a total of 78 research and innovation associate (RIA) years across the four years of the grant period, equivalent to 19.5 RIA years per grant year,” explains the email.

“This represents a significant reduction from the uplifted 58.33 PDRA [postdoctoral research associate] years per grant year awarded in 2022, and from the 41.33 PDRA years per grant year that would have been available without uplift,” it adds.

Lucien Heurtier, postdoctoral research associate in physics at King’s College London, said the reduced funding for postdoctoral positions across the UK would mean “carnage” for his discipline and undermine research quality.

“Although most institutions requested three- or four-year postdoc positions to be funded, many have been funded for only one or two years. In practice, this severely limits their scientific value: such short contracts barely allow time for a researcher to start a project, produce substantial results and secure follow-on funding,” he explained.

“Rather than supporting sustained research, they risk becoming transient positions with little long-term impact,” Heurtier added.

Funding cuts on this scale would cause many early career physicists to quit research, Heurtier told Times Higher Education.

“This won’t just concern postdocs in the UK or early career researchers based overseas who hoped to come here at some point – there are lots of PhD students starting on research who will be thinking about their postdoc,” he explained.

“They are already thinking about quitting academia but if they see there are far fewer postdoc opportunities then they are unlikely to keep going. Then you have postdocs who hoped to come back to this country – if there is no hope of a position then they will do something else,” Heurtier added.

The proposed cuts follow reassurances from science minister Patrick Vallance that postdoc funding would not bear the brunt of cost savings being sought by the STFC as a result of overspends related to higher energy prices, higher international subscription costs related to unfavourable currency swings and “over-ambitious” commitments to future projects.

Speaking before the House of Commons’ Science, Innovation and Technology Committee last week, Vallance said concerns over postdoc funding cuts raised by MPs related mainly to a “mistake” that had led to the council missing an international submission deadline in January.

“The money for those postdocs is still available and that work can happen now,” Vallance explained in relation to the missed funding deadline which, he said, had affected about 12 to 15 postdocs.

“Despite what UKRI keeps repeating…[the] political narrative that ‘there is no cut to STFC’, cuts to fundamental physics are more than ever a reality,” said Heurtier, who called Vallance’s explanation for the loss of STFC postdoc funding “confusing” in light of this week’s announcements.

“The flat budget given to STFC is meant to absorb the increasing costs of facilities that do not all benefit PPAN [particle physics, astronomy and nuclear] science, while PPAN research is being directly and brutally cut,” he said.

In a post on X, Cox took aim at the cuts, already condemned as “wholly unacceptable” by House of Commons science, innovation and technology committee chair Chi Onwurah.

Reposting a THE opinion piece on the situation, Cox said the “cuts to particle, nuclear and astro physics research in the UK will be devastating, not only to the fields themselves but also to universities more widely and, in the longer term, to industry and therefore the economy as a whole”.

“They were not thought through, there was little or no consultation, and I do not believe they have the support of Parliament,” he added.

“The [science, innovation and technology] select committee has been ignored, indeed pretty much everyone who knows anything about the successful but delicate research ecosystem in the UK has been ignored.”

Describing the situation as “a failure of communication/failure to listen at UKRI”, Cox added: “This will be reversed at some point, but it’ll cost a great deal more to fix the damage than to not cause it in the first place – given the very small sums in play.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com