Natural Environment Research Council

So there are other parts of the organization I work for, UKRI, that, um, will work on things like measuring the, um, uh, rate of climate change.

Um, colleagues at NERC down in the British Antarctic Survey measuring, uh, the shifts in the ice shelves, et cetera.

Um, we have, uh, great work on social impact and policies in the ESRC.

But that story about what the future could look like, uh, as we, A, adapt, but B, mitigate, uh, the impact of climate change seemed to me so important and so open to an arts and humanities approach.

so we as Innovate UK look after business innovation and the other research councils look after different elements.

So there's Research England which looks after research funding for universities, you've got Natural Environment Research Council which focuses on environmental issues, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council.

the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

So it's every element and domain of the UK economy and the research thereof.

And in it, you know, I mean, we highlight the importance of taxonomy, which I think is something that you and I both can agree on, Rob, that, you know, taxonomy is basically the absolute underpinning data of everything that we do, you know, in paleontology and in science.

phylogenetics and everything the absolute underpinning data is taxonomy but the problem with taxonomy is that it's really really really hard to fund um and that we are not um we're not you know because it's hard to fund you it's really you can't just say i'm going to advertise a phd on dinosaur taxonomy or fish taxonomy you know right it doesn't you just can't you can't do that You can't do a project, we can't submit a NERC grant on, I just really want to self-indulgently study the taxonomy of this dinosaur group, which is never going to fly.

And so we highlight this as an issue because taxonomy generates the data for everything else that we do.

So just to be

Acceptance rates are around 10%, you know, for some of them.

They can be lower, they can be higher, but mostly that's a rough estimation.

I think for NERC, so this is the UK Research and Investment.

We have, or is it Research and Innovation? I don't know anyway.