This morning the House of Commons Science and Tech Committee @CommonsSTC will be holding an evidence session about the planned "ARPA-style" research funding agency & asking questions including the impact of these plans on ED&I. @ProfRachelGaN here, ready to report on the session! You can join me in following the session live on Parliament TV - here's the link:
parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/e2…
It should kick off at 9 am and the witnesses will be Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, Chief Executive, UKRI; and  Sir John Kingman, Chair, UKRI .

Phew! It’s been quite a week discussing the @EPSRC report on gender & the grant portfolio. Before leaving this subject, we want to highlight how great it is to see a research council publishing detailed & granular analysis. Here’s what’s good about it! epsrc.ukri.org/files/aboutus/… 1. The EPSRC have taken responsibility for analysing the data, not just reporting it. This is in stark contrast to the UKRI data release earlier in the year - where there is a lot of information, but almost no analysis or reflection.

The @EPSRC report on gender in the funding portfolio tells us women are less likely to apply for grants across the board & are less likely to be successful when they apply for large grants. How will this impact women’s careers & the research ecosystem? epsrc.ukri.org/files/aboutus/… We know that in research - just as in pretty much all else in life- success breeds success. This report gives evidence of systematic biases and barriers which will inevitably have a huge impact on the careers of women in science.

Another key finding of the report on the EPSRC funding portfolio and gender is that the salaries requested by men are higher than those requested by women, and this gets more marked with the age of the applicant. epsrc.ukri.org/files/aboutus/… The report is not entirely clear on this point. We *think* it is referring to the salary rates which PI’s request for their own contribution to the research project. The numbers in the report include the pension and oncosts in these salary rates.

The @EPSRC report on gender and funding reveals that while women apply for smaller grants than men at every level, there are few clear patterns in what specific things they ask for less of, except for one point: women ask for less money for new equipment.
epsrc.ukri.org/files/aboutus/… There’s been no investigation of the reasons for this yet, but we can make a hypothesis, based on one specific feature of the EPSRC application process: the EPSRC currently only fund 50% of most equipment requests, with Universities having to make up the other 50%.

The second key finding of the @EPSRC report on gender in the grant portfolio is basically that women have lower success rates than men when applying for high value grants. The chart of award rate by grant value range is so striking that we’re going to show it again here: In many ways, what’s striking here is not the lowish success rate for women applying for very large amounts of money, but the very high success rate for men.

Dear all, today I (@carlafmfaria) will take over, talk about myself & what I have learned on the way. I am a professor of physics at @UCL working on #attoscience, was born in the Amazon, & I am as mixed as it gets (ca 10 ethnic groups). Hope you enjoy it. Thread will come slowly 1) For those who don't know me, I am also an undercover Black Prof, lumped under “mixed other”. This has to do with not willing to wipe out mom’s Indigenous ancestry with a pen stroke. HR forms reflect British colonization and but my country was invaded by the Portuguese.

Today on @tigerinstemm we’re going to be talking about being an ally to trans colleagues. Our aim is to talk about some options in a way that is accessible to people who may not previously have thought about these issues. This thread will be added to throughout the day. TIGERS members who are cis (i.e. whose gender identity conforms to their sex assigned at birth) try to be allies to our trans colleagues, who have been incredibly generous in educating us. This thread will explains some things we’ve learnt.

It's @BMatB taking the @tigerinstemm handle - partly in the preparation for some discussions in and around Pride month, and partly because silence is deafening. #BlackLivesMatter There are many aspects of our culture that are racist, & white people (like myself) benefit, at the cost of many others. It is simply not enough to say "I am not a racist" - we have to listen & stand up, together with our colleagues, amplify their voices and create lasting change