Transparency data

Council for Science and Technology: meeting minutes, June 2026

Published 24 September 2026

Attendees

The following attendees were present at the meeting:

• Julia Black (day 1)

• John Browne (Co-Chair)

• Mark Enzer

• Lynn Gladden

• Jim Hall

• Ted Hayden

• Matthew Henty

• Alexandra Jones (day 1)

• Saul Klein (day 2)

• Priya Lakhani

• Avid Larizadeh Duggan (day 2)

• John Lazar

• Nick McKeown

• Angela McLean (Co-Chair)

• Andrew Morris

• Paul Nurse

• Nigel Shadbolt

• Sarah Sharples (day 1)

• Richard Slater (day 1)

• Dave Smith

• Susan Smith

• Jane Williams (day 1)

Apologies

The following attendee sent their apologies:

• Paul Taylor

Guests

The following guest attended the meeting:

• Emran Mian, Permanent Secretary, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)

• Aimee Smith, Government Chief Data Officer, Government Digital Service (GDS) 

• Ollie Ilott, Director General of Emerging Technology and AI, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)

• Imogen Schon, Deputy Director of AI Strategy, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)

• Dan Shah, Chief of Investment Planning and Strategy, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

Day 1

1. Lord Browne opened the meeting, noted apologies, and welcomed Sarah Sharples to her first Council for Science and Technology meeting.

2. Government officials updated members on recent activity by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), including announcements around online safety, and updates on artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, the AI Hardware Plan, and government procurement for innovation.

3. Members discussed progress on the following projects:

• members discussed the further development of CST’s advice on the chemical industry, focussing on cross-government coordination and the need for a leader trusted by both industry and government to deliver resilience in the sector

• members noted the workshop convened with the Institute of Physics, following CST’s letter to the Prime Minister on photonics, and the ongoing engagement to inform the development of an industry roadmap

• members agreed to scope advice on neurotechnology, drawing on analysis funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA)

• members updated on the CST project on AI. The project aims to provide a first tranche of advice on AI sovereignty, including whether the UK should develop a sovereign model (or models), before considering future topics

4. Members welcomed Emran Mian, Aimee Smith, Ollie Ilott, and Imogen Schon to the meeting and discussed CST’s emerging advice on AI sovereignty, including:

• AI sovereignty as securing agency across the AI value chain, not solely model ownership

• the circumstances in which frontier capability and access are required and when sub-frontier models trained on relevant, high-quality data can be as effective

• the critical enablers to AI sovereignty, such as treating data as a national asset, governance, infrastructure, and public AI adoption

• the importance of finding appropriate use cases for smaller, cheaper AI models considering the rising costs of frontier model compute and tokens

5. Aimee Smith updated members on the National Data Library (NDL) and wider vision for public sector data. Members welcomed the clearer and more deliverable approach and discussed:

• treating data as a national asset and an enabler of sovereign AI

• public trust and the need for clear national communication help balance public concerns around AI

• the importance of a strong user focus and making datasets discoverable and usable

6. Emran Mian updated members on DSIT’s approach to technology investment, the challenge of translating strong UK start-up investment into scale-up and growth, and work on international partnerships, such as the UK-Japan Frontier Tech Partnership. Members discussed the following:

• whether there were clear criteria for what made a technology platform investable

• the limits and challenges of bilateral technology partnerships

• the importance of infrastructure, including energy supply, in the context of hardware development

Day 2

7. Members welcomed Dan Shah from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), who provided an update on UKRI’s developing strategy and delivery plan. Members then discussed CST’s proposed advice on strengthening the UK research and development (R&D) ecosystem, and noted:

• supporting the whole UK scientific ecosystem from discovery, through translation to application

• the benefits of institutional diversity (including charities and the private sector) and possible different ways of working in research delivery

• that discovery research should be fundamental and not primarily directed towards commercial outcomes

• the importance of clarity on how QR funding is used when discussing discovery research funding

• the need for appropriate metrics to assess the impact of discovery research. Members cautioned that relying on a limited set of metrics, or turning them into targets, could create perverse incentives

• the importance of making the UK attractive to international researchers

8. Members welcomed publication of the government’s AI Hardware Plan and noted its links to CST’s previous advice on sovereign AI chips. Members agreed that CST should continue to monitor the plan and wider follow-up from its advice.