Saw this on the Research!Amercia blog today and thought it was worth posting. It is a summary (taken from Lillyblog) of the Invent Act that President Obama signed into US law yesterday .

There is more than a hint of some recent-ish UK initiatives such as the Office of Life Sciences blueprint in the US Act. My eye was also caught by the commitment by 100+ universities to focus on research partnership with industry and others. Probably an unreasonable expectation to place on UK universities given the instability of our HE system here right now and their historical inability to see eye to eye with one another.

Research!America is an organisation that sometimes rears its head here in debate about whether we need a more ‘public’ facing organisation to campaign on behalf of science but also to keep a pulse on public opinion about science. I still feel it isvan idea we should explore here.

Also in my weekend reading was notice of the Research Councils UK call for applications to embed public engagement in universities. £300k is available for successful applicants over three years. An initiative that will hopefully fuel inject public engagement in institutions ahead of the Research Excellence Framework (REF).