Wales needs strategy to win more grants

The vice-chancellors of the universities of Bangor and Aberystwyth are both keen to follow Scotland into research “pooling”. This is one of the options put forward in a proposed science strategy for Wales, published in July and put out for consultation over the summer.

The draft strategy proposes several schemes to raise the STEM profiles of the country’s universities, and urges them to adopt at least one. These include Germany’s Fraunhofer institutes or Scotland’s research pools, through which university departments work together on research instead of in competition.