Centre academics are playing a leading role in a new £11.5 million AI-driven initiative hoping to transform how governments around the world use research evidence.

Led by Queen’s University, Belfast, the Mobilising Evidence Through AI and User-informed Synthesis (METIUS) project will take specific aim at the decision-making process for urgent issues like climate change, education, and public safety.

Governments often struggle to keep up with the huge amount of scientific research being published. Important findings can be hard to find or too complex to use in time-sensitive decisions. This project aims to fix that by creating a faster, smarter way to bring the best available evidence directly to the people who need it most.

Teams at the Universities of Exeter and Newcastle will spearhead one of the project’s key strands – the Methods Work Package – led by Prof Ruth Garside which will focus on developing and enhancing the methods needed to create “living evidence syntheses” that stay up to date and deliver robust, broad scale, and timely actionable insights.

Prof Garside said: “The sheer volume and range of new research is a real challenge for policymakers who need to act quickly on key issues like climate change and international development. We’re hoping to develop concrete methods that will allow interaction between AI and researchers to help us cut through that noise and synthesise evidence more effectively – ultimately ensuring that critical decisions are informed by the most relevant and up-to-date scientific findings.”

Working with transdisciplinary departments from several institutions, METIUS will pioneer the use of AI to speed up how research is gathered, analysed, and summarised.

The team from the European Centre for Environment & Human Health join experts in evidence synthesis from PenARC, including Prof Jo Thompson-Coon, to work on the project.

It will create easy-to-understand tools that help policymakers use this evidence, launch pilot projects in key areas like education, justice, and the environment, and build global networks to support evidence-based decision-making.

The project is funded by UK Research and Innovation through ESRC and NERC with co-funding from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

Full details are available here: ukri.org/news/ai-investment-to-transform-global-policy-with-scientific-evidence.