Written evidence submitted by the British Heart Foundation (IWS0003)

 

Key points

 

Relevance to the British Heart Foundation

  1. The BHF is the largest independent funder of research into heart and circulatory disease, and the third largest charitable funder of medical research in the UK.
  2. Each year, thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we fund around £100 million of new research, which accounts for more than half of the funding for cardiovascular research in the UK. Our funding portfolio extends from laboratory science to clinical trials and population studies.
  3. There are over 1200 BHF-funded researchers in the UK, and we support not only their research, but their careers. We are committed to supporting the best researchers at all levels- from Professors who are already leaders in their field, to PhD students who will become the next leaders- and aim to attract the brightest minds to the task of beating heart and circulatory disease, wherever they are from in the world.
  4. Scientific research is currently one of the UK’s biggest assets and contributes significantly to both the health and wellbeing of the public and the strength of the UK economy. The BHF has been working closely with others in the medical research sector to ensure that science and innovation is a priority in both the UK-EU negotiations and in the Government’s plans for the UK post-Brexit, including decisions about the future of the UK immigration system.


Research is international

  1. Research is an international endeavour and relies upon the mobility of researchers to facilitate collaboration and promote scientific excellence. International movement is a feature of researchers’ careers - 72% of active UK-based researchers spent time at non-UK institutions between 1996 and 2015[1].
  2. The UK research workforce is highly international. According to a study of academic staff based at UK Universities in 2016/17, 17% were from EU countries other than the UK and a further 12% were from outside the EU[2]. BHF-funded researchers are also representative of the international nature of research. Almost a fifth of BHF grants are held by non-UK EU nationals[3], while 3.4% of grant holders are of non-UK, non-EU nationality.
  3. Science and innovation are not only dependent on senior academics who lead research programmes, but the students, early career researchers and technicians who make up their labs and carry out their own research or provide vital support.
  4. Many funding schemes and research grants either require or assist researcher mobility. For example, the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions supported 3454 UK-based researchers to move within the UK, to other EU countries and to non-EU countries between 2007 and 2014[5].
  5. The inherently mobile nature of scientific research means that maintaining the ability of the UK to attract international researchers at every level is vital to ensuring continued success of medical research in the UK. Securing a science and innovation deal with the EU is crucial to supporting this aim and negotiations must include ‘people’ as a priority, to safeguard access to the talent that forms an integral part of our research ecosystem.

Mobility increases the impact of research and innovation

  1. Mobility increases the impact of academic research across all disciplines. A recent analysis of the publications of more than 16 million unique researchers between 2008 and 2015 demonstrated that those who are mobile (affiliated with more than one country during this period) had approximately 40% higher citation rates, on average, than non-mobile scholars[6].
  2. Researcher mobility takes many forms- from long-term relocation to take up an advertised post to a short-term research visit to learn a new skill. BHF-affiliated researchers have provided examples of the types of mobility they undertake and the impact of this on their work and careers. The benefits they describe include:

Box 1: Mobility creating networks and opportunities for career development

Dr Loes Rutten-Jacobs is a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn, Germany. She previously held a BHF Immediate Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge.

I moved from the Netherlands to Cambridge in 2014 with my family, immediately after my PhD in stroke epidemiology. I wanted to expand my skills to stroke genetics, and was fortunate to be able to travel to the 2015 AHA International Stroke Conference in Nashville, USA. Attending this meeting allowed me to meet with global leaders in the stroke field, which was instrumental in allowing me to write a fellowship application on stroke genetics. In autumn 2015 I was awarded a 3-year Immediate Postdoctoral Fellowship from the BHF.

In autumn 2015 I attended my first International Stroke Genetics Consortium meeting. The consortium is a community of researchers with an interest in the genetic causes of stroke, who collaborate and share large datasets to increase the impact of their studies. Attending this meeting allowed me to meet with global leaders in the field, and to hear about the latest developments in stroke genetics, which accelerated the development of my research plans.

In spring 2016, I returned to the Consortium meeting in Boston and presented my research plans to the stroke genetics community. This allowed me to connect with potential collaborators, and as a consequence of this, I spent two months in the summer of 2016 in one of the world’s foremost stroke genetics laboratories in Boston, collecting new data to enhance my own work. I still work closely with the group in Boston- I am writing a review on stroke genetics with the group leader and have recently hosted one of their postdocs who came to Bonn to give a talk.

I believe that it is essential to work in other countries as a researcher. Spending time in other labs can not only lead to new research ideas, but also provide new perspectives on what you might be able to do differently in your own lab. It’s also vital to understand how others work so that you are able to compete internationally for funding. My time in the UK was very important to my career, and moving away has also helped me to appreciate how special the research environment in Cambridge is. Being surrounded by exceptional researchers and having access to the facilities there was a fantastic experience. When I left, I was not thinking about returning, but reflecting from outside has made me consider going back in the future.

Additional testimony can be found in Annex 1, and illustrates that mobility is vital to both the work that researchers are involved in and their individual development as outstanding scientists.

  1. The future UK immigration system must support the different types of mobility that are necessary for researchers’ work and career development, by allowing them to travel and exploit global opportunities for collaboration, training and progression.

Current issues and concerns surrounding the UK visa system

  1. Non-EEA researchers are often employed via the Tier 2 visa route. The current UK visa system has been criticised as “time consuming, costly and overly complex”[7]. Regardless of whether a dual EEA/non-EEA system will be maintained, future immigration processes must be straightforward and minimise cost.
  2. The Tier 2 visa cap was reached for six consecutive months in a row between December 2017 and May 2018[8]. Over 6000 visa applications were turned down between December 2017 and March 2018, with over half of the refusals being for engineering, IT, STEM teaching and medical roles[9].
  3. Senior researchers who are recruiting others to their laboratories are being affected by the current issues surrounding Tier 2 visas. A Senior BHF Fellow told us about their experience of recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher to their lab and their understanding of the problem:

“One of my postdocs is Australian, and started in January 2018 on a Tier 2 visa. They were the best candidate for the position, but the other four interviewees were all from EU countries and not currently working in the UK. Thus whomever I chose would have had to have migrated to this country to take up the position. From what I read in the press, I was extremely lucky that their visa application went through within that month’s quota. Since then, I have heard of numerous colleagues being unable to get Tier 2 visas for non-EU job applicants, even for postdoc positions.”

  1. Reports indicate that the reaching of the Tier 2 visa cap has also resulted in inflation of the salary threshold required to qualify for a visa, from £30,000 in April 2017, to approximately £60,000 in March 2018[10]. Although positions requiring a PhD are given priority, many technical roles that are vital to research are not, and the average salary for a Research Technician in the UK is reported as less than £26,000 per annum[11] by a popular recruitment website.
  2. While the shortage occupation list allows for visas to be awarded based on the needs of the UK labour force, as science and innovation progresses in the UK, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly important, underpinning the UK Government’s Grand Challenges[12]. The increased emphasis on the use of data and AI in both medical research and the health and care sector, including a challenge from the Prime Minister to use these innovations to transform the diagnosis of chronic diseases[13], means that the skills required in our research base are changing. A recent inquiry by the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee highlighted the need for overseas skilled workers to mitigate the shortfall in the UK AI development sector[14]. Moreover, niche roles, representing not a shortage, but a need based on pioneering advancement in a new discipline, are likely to be increasingly important in driving the UK’s ability to compete globally.
  3. The future UK immigration system must be agile and enable recruitment of those possessing skills that are vital to the UK science and innovation sector. Salary is not necessarily the best proxy for skill, and the system must not negatively impact technical roles that are necessary to support cutting-edge research in the UK.

Perceptions of the UK as a place to conduct research

  1. The perception of the UK as an open and collaborative place to do research is an important factor. A 2017 survey of 255 BHF-funded researchers across a range of nationalities and career stages showed that almost half are ‘more likely’ to take up a position outside the UK than before the UK’s vote to leave the EU, rising to 80% among non-UK EU nationals. Those who said they are more likely to take up a research post elsewhere cited concerns around availability of funding, the rights of EU nationals, and opportunities for collaboration.
  2. It is crucial that the UK does not appear to be limiting to those who are hiring or applying for jobs in the UK science and innovation sector. Senior researchers seek to hire the most qualified researchers to their positions, regardless of their country of origin, while those applying for jobs need certainty and the ability to collaborate and work freely. Future immigration policy must ensure that the UK remains an attractive place to undertake ground-breaking and collaborative research, both for early career researchers coming to the UK and established researchers bringing new talent to their groups.

The importance of family and dependants

  1. We have also heard from researchers who have experienced difficulties in navigating the non-EEA visa system when aiming to settle in the UK. Box 2 details a case study from a former BHF-funded researcher whose family circumstances meant that the visa system would not allow him to remain in the UK, despite having worked here for 5 years.

Box 2: The UK visa system and family

Dr Mark Ormiston is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University in Canada. He previously held a BHF Intermediate Fellowship at the University of Cambridge.

I came to the UK in 2009, just after finishing my PhD in Canada. My wife had started a new job in London, so I was able to come as a dependant on her visa and look for jobs. I secured a 6-month contract with Professor Nicholas Morrell in Cambridge to work on pulmonary arterial hypertension, which was extended, first to a year, and then to 3 years with funding from the Canadian Government.

Once I had been in the UK for 3 years, I was eligible for a BHF Intermediate Fellowship, which was a great opportunity to enhance my career once I had established networks and a base in Cambridge. I was awarded this in August 2012. We now had our first child and my wife decided not to return to work. My Fellowship meant that we could switch our visa so that I was the primary holder, and my wife and child were now dependants. If I had not been a named researcher on my BHF Fellowship, it would have been much more complicated for us to stay in the UK.

Five years in to my time in the UK, we applied for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). I had thought that living and working in the UK for 5 years would mean that I was eligible for this. However, because I had not been the primary visa holder during our first 3 years here, I did not meet the 5 year requirement for ILR, as the ‘clock’ had been reset when we switched our visa over. This was really disappointing, and prompted my decision to move back to Canada. Fortunately, being a funded researcher at Cambridge was an enormous benefit, and I was an attractive employment prospect back home. We returned to Canada in 2015, where I took up my Assistant Professorship.

Although we had issues with the visa system, moving was incalculably beneficial to my career. I still collaborate with my colleagues in Cambridge and two of my graduate students are attending the BHF-Canadian Vascular Network Summer School in Glasgow this year. Mobility is so important to research. I believe that showing that the UK is open to the best talent from across the globe is vital to maintaining the excellent science base.

 

  1. A further illustration of the importance of enabling researchers to bring their families and dependants to the UK comes from a survey of Tier 2 work visa holders working in universities and research institutes. Of 222 academics surveyed, more than 40% said that they would definitely not have accepted their current role if their partner did not have the right to work in the UK, and a further 40% said that they would probably not[15].
  2. International researchers are already being affected by problems with the visa system and a lack of clarity and certainty over their rights and the rights of their dependants. These issues must be clarified now, to avoid damage to the UK’s reputation and ability to attract and retain international research talent.

 

 

June 2018


Annex 1: Case studies- the impact of researcher mobility on cardiovascular research

Dr Akane Kawamura is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow and a former British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence (BHF CRE) Senior Fellow in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Oxford.

I’ve spent the last few years cultivating multiple international collaborations with research groups in Europe (Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, France, Turkey), Japan, the US and Canada.  These relationships are vital to my research, and allow us to share knowledge, expertise, techniques and information, which substantially increases the depth and impact of the work that we do. For instance, our collaborators in Germany may make a potential drug molecule, and we can test it in cells in my lab to get a better idea of how it might behave in a biological setting. This not only helps us to publish our research in high-impact journals, but is crucial in expanding our scientific understanding, and applying it in different contexts depending on our expertise.

Since 2014, I have hosted eight international visitors in Oxford- some from my collaborators’ laboratories, but also others who have received their own funding to come. I have supervised undergraduate students from China, India and Spain on 8-10 week vacation studentships getting their first taste of life in the lab, and I have also hosted two students from Germany and Denmark for 6 months while they carry out longer projects for their dissertations. It is really rewarding to see them developing technical skills and an understanding of lab culture, and many of them decide to carry on with a career in research. Postgraduate students from my collaborators’ groups tend to come to undertake a specific project, learning a more complex technique or using specialised equipment in my lab. They are also able to bring new knowledge to my lab, and this really helps to drive collaborations forward. Many of the international collaborations and collaborative visits have led to joint publications or grant applications. International mobility is thus vital to effective collaborations, research progress and scientific impact.

 

Maria Cristina Carena is a PhD student in Professor Barbara Casadei’s group at the BHF CRE, University of Oxford

I joined the RADOX consortium in September 2013 as an Early Stage Researcher (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Initial Training Network). The consortium comprises eight European partners from Italy, the UK, Germany, Spain and Belgium, and focuses on the links between oxidative stress-signalling and cardiovascular disease. The aim of this network is to train PhD students to become future leaders in academia and industry, through research, workshops held across Europe and secondments in partners’ institutions, including companies.

The international and interdisciplinary nature of this fellowship enabled me to develop varied expertise across different sectors. I have had the opportunity to face different research realities across five European countries and benefited from state-of-the-art research facilities. As well as producing a successful PhD thesis, I have generated data for peer-reviewed papers published in high-impact cardiovascular research journals, which will help me to pursue a successful career in cardiovascular research.

 

 

 

Dr Hannah Boycott is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Professor Barbara Casadei’s group at the at the BHF CRE, University of Oxford

I have been a Postdoctoral Researcher for several years and left my BHF funded position at the University of Leeds in 2010 to take up positions in France and then Canada. 

I returned to the UK in 2015 thanks to a BHF visiting scholar award as part of Professor Barbara Casadei’s BHF chair. During my time in Oxford I successfully applied for a BHF CRE travel award which enabled me to return to work with my former colleagues in France for a month to gather some data, which was used in an application to the European Union for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. This application was successful, and I will shortly return to Professor Casadei’s team to begin this. Part of the research plan involves a six-week secondment to France where I will build upon the preliminary data I obtained thanks to the BHF CRE award, fostering the ties between our institutions and hopefully resulting in further fruitful collaborations. The panel of experts who reviewed my Fellowship proposal said that the secondment was one of the strongest parts of the application, so I am certain that being mobile as a researcher was instrumental to my obtaining this highly prestigious award.

 

Dr Duncan Sparrow is a BHF Senior Basic Science Research Fellow based at the University of Oxford.

I am a dual British-Australian national, therefore a bit more mobile than the average researcher, and have found moving internationally incredibly helpful for my career. By changing countries and institutions, I’ve got to meet a lot of people I might not have otherwise encountered, giving me expanded perspectives on science, and allowing me to create larger professional networks. I did my PhD in Adelaide, Australia, then my first postdoc at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, followed by a second postdoc in Sydney, Australia. This experience enabled me to apply to the Oxford BHF Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) to set up my own lab in 2015.

Moving back to the UK to set up my own lab was quite a risky decision, as I did not have any funding track record in the UK, although I had established one in Australia. The BHF CRE committee were extremely supportive, giving me a 2-year Transitional Fellowship to get me to Oxford and recruit a postdoc. The University of Oxford has an excellent core of scientists in my field of developmental and cardiovascular biology, as well as extremely good and up-to-date equipment and facilities. With this support and additional funding, I was able to generate enough preliminary data to apply for my BHF Senior Fellowship, which I was awarded earlier this year.


 

Professor Costanza Emanueli is a BHF Chair of Cardiovascular Science at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

I completed my PhD in Italy in 2000 and spent the next few years working as a postdoc in Italy and the United States. In 2005, I was awarded a BHF Basic Science Lectureship, which brought me to the University of Bristol. By this time, I was already established as a scientist in Europe and was considering moving to the USA. I eventually decided to come to the UK because of the excellent and multi-cultural environment (comparable to the USA), as well as the possibility of maintaining access to my European networks, but also to spare me and my family from all the issues related to living and work on a visa.

For scientists looking to establish their careers, it is vitally important to interact with other researchers and the wider society, so I often send junior members of my group to spend time in my international collaborators’ labs. They usually go for around 2 weeks to receive specific training in new research protocols, develop or hone some technical skills and, importantly, to experience a different culture. As an example, one of my postdocs is currently in New Zealand for a collaborative project.  I also host a lot of visiting students, including from countries outside Europe, such as Pakistan. Their visits last around 6 months, as they need more time for general training. I think they benefit enormously from the excellent facilities that we have in UK universities and I really enjoy seeing them flourish- it’s a joy for me to host them. However, in my experience, it can be hard for non-EU researchers to obtain a visa to allow them to come to Europe for a short research visit, or even a conference. It’s very disappointing that they miss out on these truly formative opportunities. Our institutions are also limited in the number of students they can sponsor and are responsible for formally monitoring their whereabouts which is a significant responsibility as well as an administrative burden for the supervisor. 

 

Professor Sian Harding is Director of the BHF Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine Centre at Imperial College, London

Imperial College is very international and we have a series of excellent exchanges. We take on fantastic medical students from Hannover for internships, which regularly provide the seeds of fruitful collaborations and facilitate applications to EU funding schemes, including Horizon 2020.

The Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine Centre works extensively with colleagues at the University of Hamburg, in pioneering research on the development of engineered heart tissue, which can be used both to study and potentially repair failing hearts. This involves producing three-dimensional tissue samples from human stem cells, using techniques that were established by our German collaborators. The collaboration has allowed us to share both expertise and essential materials, so that we could develop this research programme here. With any new technique, being able to see it working first hand is crucial, so our researchers needed to see the experimental design in Germany, before trying it in the Imperial laboratory. Translating research from one place to another is seldom straightforward, so further visits to Hamburg (as well as from Hamburg to Imperial) then helped to answer questions and iron out problems that our team was having making the experiments work in the UK. The Centre of Regenerative Medicine allowed us to build this major collaborative project, and the ability of researchers to move freely between the UK and Germany has been vital to the programme’s success.

 

[1] Elsevier, International comparative performance of the UK research base, 2016.

[2] HESA, Staff by geographic region of nationality 2016/17. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff

[3]19% of 556 lead researchers/PhD supervisors

[4] HESA, HE student enrolments by domicile 2012/13 to 2017/17. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/where-from

[5] The Royal Society, UK research and the European Union: The role of the EU in international research collaboration and researcher mobility, May 2016.

[6] Sugimoto, CR et al, Scientists have  most impact when they are free to move, Nature, 550, 29–31, 5th October 2017, doi:10.1038/550029a

[7] Migration Advisory Committee, EEA-workers in the UK labour market: interim update, 28th March 2018.

[8] Fragomen, 18th May 2018.

[9] Campaign for Science and Engineering, 16th May 2018.

[10] Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, Skilled Non-EU Migration-Is the Cap in Hand?, March 2018.

[11] https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/research-technician-salary-SRCH_KO0,19.htm

[12] HM Government, Policy Paper-The Grand Challenges, updated May 2018.

[13] PM Speech, Science and Industrial Strategy, 21st May 2018.

[14] House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, AI in the UK: ready, willing and able? 16th April 2018.

[15] Permits Foundation, Response to the UK Migration Advisory Committee Call for Evidence: Tier 2, September 2015.