Nitrogen, the autumn statement, executive meetings and new ways of working
Last week began with attendance at part of our facilitated ‘ideas lab’ meeting, seeking to develop highly innovative thinking in how to capture dinitrogen biologically and thereby to lower (and...
View ArticleCouncil, Rothamsted, GSK and climate change
An important meeting last week was the last Council meeting of 2012, where substantive items included a detailed, high-level analysis of our research grant expenditure and portfolio, plus discussion...
View ArticleOxford farming, open access and Honours
Among a number of our community who were honoured in Her Majesty’s list of New Year Honours (pdf), I was especially delighted to see that our Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer Steve Visscher had...
View ArticleDefra, open access and planning
The majority of last week’s meetings were ‘internal’, mainly around planning for future activities, but I did join a very useful discussion with representatives of the Russell Group about the...
View ArticleLithuania, e-science and RCUK
Lithuania holds the next presidency of the EU, and we had a very useful meeting with Minister Counsellor Sigitas Mitkus at the Lithuanian Embassy in London. I had visited Lithuania in 1989 as part of a...
View ArticleIndustrial Biotechnology, Research Advisory Panel and strategies
Last week the Research Council Chief Executives, along with Iain Gray (Head of the Technology Strategy Board) and David Parker (CEO of the UK Space Agency) had one of our periodic meetings with...
View ArticleAudit Board, Lords Open Access, Council and BioIndustry
Following our latest Audit Board meeting, I made an appearance (available for a while to be viewed on Parliament TV) before the very distinguished House of Lords Science and Technology Committee to...
View ArticleResearch showcase, environmental monitoring and synthetic biology
The week began with a ‘Research Showcase’ event in the Palace of Westminster, highlighting the contribution made by five HEIs to various grand challenges, including bioenergy, and attracting some 30...
View ArticleOpen access, agri-tech, triennials and the AAAS
Last week involved a busy day at BIS presenting, with our Chair Professor Sir Tom Blundell, to the Triennial Review team, followed by two meetings chaired by David Willetts on Open Access (where there...
View ArticleInstitutes, agri-tech and tuberculosis
After returning from the AAAS meeting that I described last week, we had one of our periodic meetings with the Directors and Deputy Directors of the Institutes that we fund strategically. This one was...
View ArticleBabraham, science-art and open access
Last week saw a number of meetings connected with the Babraham Institute. In the first I performed the official opening of the new ‘Building 570’ that brings together a majority of Babraham scientists,...
View ArticleAgriculture, leavings and open access
The week started with a joint Manchester-Brazil meeting on bioenergy and industrial biotechnology, where I learnt in particular about an enormous metagenomics programme at the Brazilian Centre for...
View ArticleInflammation, Council, Sir Mark Walport and TSB
The week started by attending a symposium to mark the opening of the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research, a research centre co-funded (to the tune of £5M each) by Astrazeneca and...
View ArticleOpen data, fostering innovation, UK-CDS, industrial biotechnology and...
One of last week’s major meetings was one of our periodic gatherings of the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences, where among other aspects I rehearsed the benefits of Open Access (mentioned last...
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Bioenergy, Open access, drug discovery and e-science
My initial meeting last week was a very pleasant trip to listen to part of the annual symposium of the BSBEC consortium. I am not going to pick out any specific talks or posters (for which I presented...
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Infrastructures, open access and CSaP
The week started with the latest meeting of the e-infrastructure leadership Council, co-chaired by Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts, where the main items centred around developing...
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MRC, e-science, ABPI and partnerships
The first external meeting of the week was to fulfil, with Director of Science Prof Melanie Welham, an invitation to discuss areas of mutual scientific interest with the Strategy Board of the Medical...
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Evaluations, Gatsby and partnerships
As previously, this is the season of internal evaluations of the activities and achievements of Swindon Office Directors during the last year (though since the governance changes I provide only...
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Biotechnology in Korea and Japan
To ensure that BBSRC Science remains at the frontier of international competitiveness, I arrange occasional visits abroad, approximately annually, to check this out on the ground (one such was the Big...
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Biotechnology, biologicals and banking
Last week, we completed our mission on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy to Korea with visits to Prof Hiroaki Kitano and colleagues at The Systems Biology Institute, to the Japan Society for the...
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