UK visa scheme for prize-winning scientists receives no applications

Exclusive: A fast-track visa way for Nobel prize laureates and different award-winners successful science, engineering, the humanities and medicine has failed to pull immoderate applicants

Humans 22 November 2021

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

Kevin Foy/Alamy

Not a azygous idiosyncratic has applied to a UK authorities visa strategy for Nobel prize laureates and different grant winners since its motorboat six months ago, New Scientist can reveal. The strategy has travel nether disapproval from scientists and has been described arsenic “a joke”.

In May, the authorities launched a fast-track visa way for award-winners successful the fields of science, engineering, the humanities and medicine who privation to enactment successful the UK. This prestigious prize way makes it easier for immoderate academics to use for a Global Talent visa – it requires lone 1 application, with nary request to conscionable conditions specified arsenic a assistance from the UK Research and Innovation backing assemblage oregon a occupation connection astatine a UK organisation.

The fig of prizes that suffice academics for this route presently stands astatine implicit 70, and includes the Turing Award, the L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women successful Science International Awards, and assorted gongs awarded by nonrecreational oregon rank bodies some successful the UK and elsewhere.

“Winners of these awards person reached the pinnacle of their vocation and they person truthful overmuch to connection the UK,” said location caput Priti Patel erstwhile the prestigious prize strategy launched successful May. “This is precisely what our caller point-based migration strategy was designed for – attracting the champion and brightest based connected the skills and endowment they have, not wherever they’ve travel from.”

But a state of accusation petition by New Scientist has revealed that successful the six months since the strategy was launched, nary 1 moving successful science, engineering, the humanities oregon medicine has really applied for a visa done this route.

“Chances that a azygous Nobel oregon Turing laureate would determination to the UK to enactment are zero for the adjacent decennary oregon so,” says Andre Geim astatine the University of Manchester, UK. Geim won a Nobel prize successful 2010 for his enactment connected graphene. “The strategy itself is simply a gag – it cannot beryllium discussed seriously,” helium says. “The authorities thinks if you pump up UK subject with a verbal diarrhea of optimism – it tin someway go a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Frankly, having precisely zero radical use for this elitist strategy doesn’t astonishment maine astatine all,” says Jessica Wade, a worldly idiosyncratic astatine Imperial College London and a diversity successful subject campaigner. “UK scientists’ entree to European backing is uncertain, we’re not precise charismatic to European students arsenic they person to wage planetary fees, our pensions are being chopped and technological positions successful the UK are some uncommon and precarious.”

“It’s wide this is conscionable different gimmick from a authorities that over-spins and nether delivers,” says shadiness subject curate Chi Onwurah. “It is not astonishing that the authorities has failed truthful comprehensively to pull scientists from abroad, fixed their deficiency of accordant enactment for scientists here.”

A Home Office spokesperson told New Scientist that the prestigious prizes way makes it easier for those astatine the “pinnacle of their career” to travel to the UK. “It is conscionable 1 enactment nether our Global Talent route, done which we person received thousands of applications since its motorboat successful February 2020 and this continues to rise,” they said.

Neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop astatine the University of Oxford says different visa routes are already quick-moving for apical scientists and says it is unusual that this strategy was launched successful the archetypal place.

Andrew Clark astatine the Royal Academy of Engineering says his organisation is blessed with the fig of applications they person seen precocious crossed each migration routes for overseas scientists. “In galore cases applicants would beryllium eligible for aggregate routes,” helium says. “We wouldn’t privation to absorption connected the usage of immoderate peculiar way implicit a six-month period, but alternatively the wide success.”

The thought of prioritising introduction to the UK for subject grant winners is flawed, according to geoscientist Christopher Jackson astatine the University of Manchester, who successful 2020 became the first achromatic idiosyncratic to big the Royal Institution’s Christmas lectures. Jackson says these awards are inherently biased and an migration strategy based connected them volition lone replicate science’s deficiency of diversity.

“How we measurement excellence is precise nebulous,” says Jackson. “These awards favour definite radical – those who are white, male, heterosexual, cis-gendered – and reward them based connected their privilege.”

Of the implicit 600 Nobel subject laureates from 1901, conscionable 23 are women. No grant has ever been fixed to a achromatic laureate successful a subject subject. “Studies amusement that astir technological grant winners are achromatic men of European descent and often moving astatine American universities,” Jackson says.

Similar patterns are seen successful those who triumph immoderate of the different awards eligible for the prestigious prize visa route. Of the 5 who person won the Institute of Physics’ Isaac Newton Medal and Prize since 2015, nary person been women. Only 1 pistillate has won the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Prince Philip Medal since 2014.

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