Professor Andrea Ferrari welcomed cabinet minister Matt Hancock to the Cambridge Graphene Centre, where he spoke of the benefits European Union membership brings the city. Professor Ferrari said hundreds of scientists working on the potential applications for graphene at the Centre would be put at risk if Britain left the EU.
The Centre receives significant funding from the European Research Council.
In an interview with Cambridge News, Professor Ferrari said: “I don’t think anybody knows what happens if the referendum goes for Brexit; it will take quite a long period of time to figure out what is going on, but I cannot see how anything good is going to come from Britain leaving the EU.
“Cambridge gets a very large amount of money from the EU for science and technology, and for me there is only one answer; we can only lose out from going.”
Professor Ferrari is Professor of Nanotechnology and serves as Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Graphene Technology.
Matt Hancock is minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General as well as MP for West Suffolk. He praised the Cambridge Graphene Centre’s research for putting Cambridge “on the map as a centre of advanced manufacturing, supporting thousands of jobs.”
Cambridge TV broadcasted footage of the meeting, available at the link in the right column.
