In Conversation with Professor Chris Johnson, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) by ARMA UK

ARMAuk — 2026-09-04 09:15:25 UTC

Please submit your questions for Professor Chris Johnson by 6 October 2026. Questions received will help inform the facilitated discussion.

AI for grant processing

2026-09-14 09:11:04 UTC

We welcome a faster grant delivery by UKRI, but they needs to adopt their AI tools responsibly, as grant proposals are researchers' intellectual property. Without proper safeguarding and consent, UKRI may lose trust from researchers and the research community. We would welcome an opportunity to co-develop with UKRI.

Smaller number of bigger, longer-term investments

2026-09-14 09:31:26 UTC

The New Science Minister spoke of a UKRI target to "back a smaller number of bigger, longer-term investments”, meaning “fewer speculative applications chasing the same pot". Science minister: UKRI should fund ‘fewer, longer research grants’. Will this reduce the diversity of research? How will this affect researchers' careers, especially early career researchers independence?

Demand Management

2026-09-15 14:33:23 UTC

With potentially more DM requests coming to universities, can UKRI please ensure there is sufficient time for Universities to do a DM with fair process? Can UKRI develop a better algorithm to allocate the number of the caps for each institution?