Prosperity outcomes
Productive Nation
The future competitiveness and creativity of the UK economy requires the successful development of world-leading products, processes and technology based on the discovery and innovation in the mathematical and physical sciences, information and computing technologies, and engineering. Our ambitions anticipate economic and social change, and imply significant re-skilling of the UK workforce with a particular requirement to achieve technical leadership through the development of future scientists, engineers and technologists.
Example priority areas for strategic programmes:
- Innovative, disruptive technologies
- Business innovation via digital transformation
- Transformation to a sustainable society: the circular economy.
Healthy Nation
Our health - our state of mental and physical wellbeing - affects our quality of life, the resilience of communities and the productivity of the nation. Advances based on new research in the engineering and physical sciences will revolutionise our ability to manage our own health, help us to maintain healthier behaviours and environments, and transform the way care is delivered. Novel technologies and materials will continue to improve our ability to predict, diagnose and treat disease. Research will deliver better quality of life, higher standards of affordable care and will drive UK growth through new products and services.
Priorities specifically addressing the above outcomes will, over the Delivery Plan period, form a significant element of our 'top-down' strategic research programme, which will constitute around 40% of our portfolio. By presenting challenges in terms of outcomes for the UK, our aim is for all researchers, across the entire EPSRC remit, to consider how they will contribute and how they can combine with others in the multi-disciplinary approaches required to solve the national and global problems of our age. We will also welcome initiatives from the academic and business communities to develop challenge-led programmes that contribute to these.
Example priority areas for strategic programmes:
- Transforming community health and care
- Improving prevention and public health.
Resilient Nation
Safeguarding future generations requires an ability to anticipate, adapt and respond to changes, natural or man-made, short or long-term, local or global. UK prosperity depends on the smooth and sustainable functioning of complex infrastructures: transport; communications networks; water, energy and waste utilities. The mathematical and physical sciences, computing and engineering are fundamental to the new thinking and innovation needed to build a truly resilient nation and to increase UK competitiveness. Moreover, EPS contributes to the resilience of developing countries through, for example, robust, low-cost infrastructure.
Example priority areas for strategic programmes:
- Energy security and efficiency
- Reliable infrastructure
- Better solutions to acute threats.
Connected Nation
The UK's success will be driven by as yet unimagined, new industries and services, and by innovative, more cost-effective ways of delivering existing services through transformational technologies which connect people, things and data together, in safe, smart, secure, trustworthy, and productive ways. This will be a major driver of economic growth and efficiency across all regions and sectors of the UK. This relies on discovery and innovation in the mathematical and physical sciences, computing, and engineering.
Example priority areas for strategic programmes:
- Data-driven economy
- Capitalising on the Internet of Things
- Safe and trusted cyber-society.