On the 17th June 2026, the UK Microsystems Network launched The Invisible Frontier: Towards a UK Microsystems Strategy at the Royal Society in London, the first comprehensive assessment of a sector that underpins technologies across defence, life sciences, AI infrastructure, and clean energy, yet has never before been measured as a distinct industrial activity.
The event brought together representatives from EPSRC, industry representatives, academics, and other organisations reflecting the cross-cutting nature of a field whose contribution is typically embedded within the products and systems it enables rather than recognised in its own right.
Dr Gerard Cummins, Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Birmingham and Principal Investigator of the EPSRC-funded UK Microsystems Network, opened proceedings with a technical framing of the field. He set out why microsystems resist simple definition, spanning MEMS, microfluidics, microsensors, micro-acoustics, and MOEMS, and argued that the defining engineering challenge lies not in fabricating individual components but in heterogeneous integration: combining technologies built in fundamentally different ways into single, deployable systems. Using devices such as the Oxford Nanopore MinION as examples, he showed how sensing, fluidics, custom silicon, and on-device computation must be co-designed to function as one, and described microsystems as a horizontal capability that runs beneath the verticals of both the UK Industrial Strategy and UKRI’s missions.
Adam Green, co-author of the report at Type Ventures, presented the strategic case. He examined where the UK stands internationally—competing through specialisation and integration depth rather than fabrication scale and the strategic windows now open or closing across the sector, drawing on the report’s analysis of comparator approaches in the US, EU, and Canada. He set out the report’s five recommendations, spanning recognition in industrial policy, dedicated growth financing, shared fabrication and advanced packaging infrastructure, a coordinated talent pipeline, and systematic ecosystem coordination.
Gabriele Bowen, who led the economic modelling at Mount Crescent Research, presented the quantitative findings. Applying an input-output framework to firm-level data compiled from Companies House and The Data City alongside ONS statistics, the assessment values the sector at £3.1 billion in total economic output and £1.3 billion in gross value added, supporting more than 15,000 jobs once supply chain effects are included. Microsystems firms themselves generate £2.1 billion in direct output and operate at a productivity rate 26 per cent above the national average, a level typically associated with the most advanced sectors of the economy.
Together, the talks set out the central argument of the report: that the UK holds world-class, geographically clustered capability in microsystems, built patiently over decades, that is materially significant to the national economy and to multiple strategic sectors—but which remains largely invisible to policy, funding, and talent pathways. As the report notes, this is a capability that, if allowed to erode, would be considerably harder to rebuild than to sustain. With major economies including Canada, the United States, and the EU beginning to treat microsystems as a strategic priority, the report makes the case that the UK has a first-mover opportunity to recognise the field within its industrial strategy, and that the competitive positions shaping the next twenty years are being set now.
The Invisible Frontier: Towards a UK Microsystems Strategy is available to download here. The UK Microsystems Network welcomes new members from across academia, research organisations, government, and industry.
