Executive Director's Report

摘要

Of course, all the talk at the moment is about cut backs and how to best promote maths to weather the financial storms. Professor Adrian Smith, Director General of Research at the Department of Business Industry and Skills, has consulted with selected organisations as to how the balance of research funding should be invested. There are competing demands and a shortage of cash. Should the cross-cutting themes be prioritized over maintaining the core disciplines that feed all research needs? Unfortunately, the Royal Academy of Engineering has fuelled emotions by calling for an increase in engineering research and a cut in maths and physics research. On further investigation it turns out that the Academy did not mean to highlight mathematics, it was just lumped together in a finan-cial grouping. As if maths did not have enough difficulties without unwarranted accidental friendly fire! At the time of writing there is no sign of a retraction from the RAEng, but we will continue to lobby for this error to be reversed.