The UK Government has updated the country’s science and research partnership with Switzerland, announcing £16 million in funding to focus on sectors from healthcare to green energy.
The joint funding includes backing for UK-Swiss clinical trials that the government said could help unlock new treatments and diagnoses for a range of diseases, as well as support for quantum technology.
To strengthen collaboration between the UK and Swiss science, research and technology sectors, Innovate UK and the Swiss innovation agency Innosuisse have jointly awarded £8 million in funding to support eleven research projects involving teams from both countries.
These range from work on new antibacterial coatings that could prevent infections during hip and knee replacements, to using quantum tech to develop new generations of cheaper, specialised sensors for use in anti-counterfeiting and manufacturing quality control, with the projects bringing together UK and Swiss businesses, research institutes and universities.
The government said that the updated partnership builds on previous UK-Switzerland Collaborative R&D funding which supported research into new ways of capturing CO2 emissions, as well as developing robot surgeons.
The eleven winners of the UK-Switzerland Collaborative R&D Round 2 funding competition will receive a share of £4 million from Innovate UK, match-funded with the equivalent sum in Swiss Francs from Innosuisse.
Swiss Federal councillor Guy Parmelin said: “I am delighted that the outstanding cooperation between Switzerland and the United Kingdom will be further strengthened in the coming years.
“This is made possible in particular through cooperation between our innovation promotion agencies, the Swiss National Science Foundation and its partner institutions, and between the Paul Scherrer Institute and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council.”
Both countries are also looking to the partnership to further boost their life sciences sectors. To that end, the UK and Swiss governments have issued a new £8 million joint funding call in the support of clinical trials to target a range of diseases affecting patients across both nations.
The work will be overseen by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the research delivery arm of the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
On signing the updated UK-Swiss Memorandum of Understanding in Berne, the UK science minister, Patrick Vallance, said: “Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs happen simply by bringing big thinkers and innovators together.
“To unleash science as a force for good in the world, it is critical that we build deeper and broader ties with research powerhouses like Switzerland. Science is fundamentally international, and by working together, the UK and Switzerland’s researchers, academics and businesses will be able to aim higher and achieve more.”
The updated UK-Swiss MoU also commits both countries to deepen their links in fields such as the space sector and AI, with the agreement part of the UK Government’s plan to strengthen ties with international partners, and hopefully accelerate investments in UK technologies, supporting the creation of jobs, long-term economic growth, and the much promised overhaul of public services.
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Last week saw the UK strike a similar partnership with the Gulf state Qatar, which promised £1 billion of investment in climate technology that the government expects will lead to thousands more highly skilled jobs in new startups, as well as providing a backbone for climate technology hubs across the UK.
As with the update to the UK-Swiss partnership, the government’s deal with Qatar will see the two countries work together on AI development, as well as plans for a shared Genomics Medicine Academy.
