I was reading an article in Times Higher Education about some of the impacts already being felt in the university sector. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/uk-universities-lose-grants-and-staff-brexit-uncertainty-grows?utm_source=THE+Website+Users&utm_campaign=310ef8bab3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_04_08_12_43&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_daa7e51487-310ef8bab3-62248513
You need to register to read it so I'll quote some of the highlights:
Leading professors have warned that uncertainty over the UK’s future access to European Union research funding is already undermining grant applications and forcing academics overseas.
professor of primary care health sciences at the University of Oxford, said that she had been shortlisted for a €10 million (£8.6 million) ERC grant but felt that she was “unlikely to get it now”, given the uncertainty about whether the project could be completed. “If I were to win the grant, and we left Europe without a deal, there’s no question I’d lose the funding,” she said.
Another UK academic, who asked not to be named, said that she and her colleagues had been excluded from opportunities to work with longstanding collaborators on the Continent who feared the consequences of having British scholars on grant applications.
While her own relationships with collaborators had experienced no problems, Professor Greenhalgh said there was “an overwhelming sense now, that [EU collaborators] are losing patience”.
“They’ve been good to us and understanding for so long, but we are beginning to see a breakdown in collegiality,” she warned. “There is no doubt collaborations will crumble and we will be left out in the cold.”
Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at Oxford, said that her ERC grant, which is 18 months in, covers her salary and that of several staff. “If there was hard Brexit and the government did not cover the lost funds, there would be many redundancies,” she said.
Growing numbers of researchers have indicated that the uncertainty over access to EU funding has driven them to move abroad.
Earlier this year Catherine Heymans, professor of astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, told Times Higher Education that she was moving to the University of Bonn after winning a €1.5 million grant backed by the German government.
“It’s Brexit. The day after the referendum I started looking for alternative funding, because over my career about 90 per cent of my funding has come from the EU,” she said.