US and UK sign Science and Technology Agreement
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US and UK sign Science and Technology Agreement
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cience and technology collaboration between the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) received a government-backed boost in September 2017 with the signing of the umbrella Science and Technology Agreement between the two nations. Signed by Judith Garber, US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, and Jo Johnson, UK Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, the agreement outlines “a commitment to collaborate on world-class science and innovation,” according to a joint statement by the US and UK governments. While this is called the first formal science and technology (S&T) agreement between the US and the UK, the joint statement characterizes the ongoing scientific partnership between these two nations as “one of the world’s strongest” and notes that it has already resulted in 26 Nobel prizes across science and economics. In addition, an umbrella agreement for S&T cooperation between the US and the EU—of which the UK is currently a member—was signed in 1997 and has been extended to October 2018. But with the 2016 referendum decision to leave the EU, the UK has begun to pursue its own international cooperation and policy agreements.
The text of the S&T agreement is not yet publicly available, but both the US and UK governments have released some details. According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the agreement is meant to cover a range of science and policy areas, including “basic science, early-stage R&D, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, promising new public–private partnership models, and the role that science and technological advancement play in economic prosperity.” The OSTP also says the agreement establishes a guide for cooperation that details how intellectual property resulting from US-UK collaboration will be handled and how expertise, materials, equipment, and data will be shared. The first major project of the S&T agreement is already under way with a UK government investment of £65 million (approximately USD$88 million) to help construct the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility/Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (LBNF/DUNE). Hosted by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, the LBNF/DUNE project will include a new linear accelerator and an upgrade to Fermilab’s existing accelerators to send a beam of neutrinos over 800 miles through the earth to a detector that is being constructed one mile below ground at the
Graphic of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility/Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (LBNF/DUNE) project. Credit: Fermilab.
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Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. According to a UK government press release on the S&T agreement, “the UK is a major scientific contributor to the DUNE collaboration, with 14 UK universities and two Science and Technology Facilities Council laboratories providing essential expertise and componen
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