UK physicists dumped from European research network

Physicists from the University of Sheffield have been excluded from a planned European consortium due to the uncertainties over Brexit, their head of department has said.

Paul Crowther is professor of astrophysics and interim head of department in physics and astronomy at Sheffield. He said that in the wake of the UK’s referendum on its membership of the European Union, one of his colleagues—who wished not to be named—received an email from the lead coordinator of a planned European Training Network consortium. It said that the researcher’s group would be excluded from the project due to Britain’s vote to leave the union.

The email, sent in late July and seen by Research Fortnight, says: “I regret to inform you that in the end we decided to not include your group in the consortium. The main reason of this decision concerns the Brexit [vote] and all the incertitude it brings. It may seem a very drastic decision (at least this is my feeling), but this is the outcome of the discussions I had…We finally decided to ‘remove’ the problem at the base.”