UK: SCIENCE IN THE MAKING.

Can private money bridge the industrial/academic gap?

Last April One Minute Briefs commented on attempts to bring the scientific and engineering resources of Britain's universities to the aid of her manufacturing industries. Experts on both sides of the industrial/academic divide are currently hoping that the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council will triumphantly succeed where its predecessors relatively failed. But EPSRC operates at a national level. What about the local level, or industrial level? Shouldn't there be a multiplicity of agencies aiming to marry research and its application, some of them acting with the benefit of local knowledge and wholly financed by the private sector?