Global Approaches to Global Problems

Recent decades have witnessed major changes in the global scientific scene.  China has emerged as a scientific super power and other countries such as Brazil, India and South Korea are rapidly entering the premier league of scientific nations.  The combined international spend on R&D has grown 45% since 2002 to over a trillion US dollars, and globally there are now over seven million researchers.  Alongside this growth, global science has become increasingly interconnected. Over one third of the articles published in international journals are the product of an international collaboration, up from a quarter fifteen years ago.

The world‑wide‑web has enabled world‑class work in hitherto scientifically isolated locations and a much wider range of collaborations.  In parallel with this growing dispersal, work that relies on increasingly expensive big facilities has become more concentrated, with cheap air travel making it possible for researchers to commute to wherever they can best carry out their research.  Meanwhile, the closure of many of the big corporate laboratories, and industry's need to draw on an increasingly wide range of disciplines, has led to growth in outsourcing of industrial R&D to universities, wherever the best talent and value for money can be found.

I shall discuss changing patterns of science and scientific collaboration as a basis for understanding such on‑going changes.  The aims are to identify the opportunities and benefits of international collaboration, and consider how they can best be realised, and open up a debate on how international scientific collaboration could be better harnessed to tackle global problems.