Meeting of the Parliament 25 January 2024
The universities have received more than £1 billion from the Government per year for the past number of years. I am concerned about the very difficult budget that the Scottish Government has to implement following the settlement from the UK Government. Members of all parties across the chamber should also be concerned about the cut in the budget that the Scottish Government has received from the UK Government.
Our universities are playing a tremendous role at the moment, and they will continue to do so. Spin-outs from Scottish universities continue to attract significant investment, with £235 million making it a record year for spin-out value—up 53 per cent on 2021.
The University of Dundee was named the world’s most influential pharmaceuticals research institution, above the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Berkeley, Oxford and Cambridge. TauRx, an Aberdeen spin-out that is seeking to develop a treatment for Alzheimer’s, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars since its founding in 2002. It promises great things.
The Research Excellence Framework 2021 shows that there is world-leading research in every Scottish university. Edinburgh Napier University is one of three in Scotland and one of seven in the UK to achieve the highest rating for research in computer science.
Our global leadership can be seen reflected back at us from space. Scottish scientists designed crucial technology within the world’s most powerful space telescope—the James Webb telescope, which allows us to look back in time over tens of millions of years—and developed key components for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory project, the first in the world to detect gravitational waves. Those are all part of Scotland’s tech for good approach, as those advancements can be seen to benefit our health and other needs of society.
Two university spin-outs, MR CoilTech and Wideblue, are behind new technology that is being used in the next generation of ultra-high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging scanners and other medical devices.