As part of the first of our UKRI Connect events, this plenary session was held in Norwich on 20 October 2023 – on how UKRI is becoming a world-class organisation supporting world-class people, places, ideas, innovation and impacts through our Transforming Tomorrow Together strategy.
Plenary segments:
00:00:00 – Welcome by Roz Bird , CEO of Norwich Research Park
00:06:29 – Transforming Tomorrow Together: Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, CEO of UKRI reflects on the year since UKRI’s strategy launched, and UKRI’s role as a flexible and innovative funder driving a shared endeavour
00:20:37 – Panel one: The role of UKRI as a flexible and innovative funder. Ottoline is joined by Professor Guy Poppy, Executive Chair of @bbsrcmedia and Stian Westlake, Executive Chair of @theesrc for a Q&A session. Chaired by Roz Bird.
00:47:26 – Panel two: How research and innovation is a driver for regional and local growth. Thought pieces from Rt Hon Chloe Smith MP, Roz Bird, Professor Andrew Lovett from University of East Anglia and Professor Anne Osbourn from the John Innes Centre. Chaired by Phil Ward, Director of Eastern Arc.
01:18:45 – Panel two Q&A session
01:48:32 – Wrap up / closing remarks by Phil Ward
Taking place across the country throughout 2023 and 2024, we’re running four of these connect events to bring together regional R&I stakeholders to showcase our portfolio, the value and opportunities of our investments and discuss shared goals.
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A very warm welcome to our audience here and online um and again welcome to welcome you kri Senior Team to Norwich bit of housekeeping before we go much further so the toilets are at the back of the room um there’s no fire alarm expected uh there’s a master Point outside of the
Fire doors out this way uh into the car park and on the right you can obviously go out the doors you came in or follow through this way if you hear the alarm um next message is to keep and reuse your cups for tea and coffee okay so that’s
A that’s a a good a good plan um and then in terms of Photography Adam is taking photographs there are signs to say if you don’t want to be in a photograph please mention that to Adam so hopefully um you know um please do that uh if you haven’t done so far and
Then finally if you’re talking about this and um on social media and which we hope you will talk about being here and the the conversations you’re having you can use the hashtag ukri connect will work and we can bring everything together um so I’m Ros bird I’m the chief exec of
Angler Innovation partnership with a science Park management company for Norwich Research Park and i s i I have to say I need to say that I bring a potentially a a private sector perspective to the park and to the day’s discussions uh my background is as a surveyor and a science park manager
Developer getting planning consent and um uh managing and running and developing uh science parks in the UK um so this is the Midway point of the UK ukri 2-day program um it’s connecting all of us as cross- sector stakeholders in Norwich Norfolk and the east of England uh your presence and
Participation from from the conversations we’ve had with ukri so far they’re saying it fuels their energy and their enthusiasm uh as a ukri team when they go back to the office um and so that’s really important actually for us to know that because they’ve got real ambition
For Change and uh for success and that will benefit all of us so let’s keep them motivated and enthusiastic they go into the office off next Monday um so I have read the strategy um and and and I genuinely think that it is an inspiring read and I I have read a
Number of government documents in the past and they we all know that they’re not all like that um but the reason it is is because it is ambitious um but I do think it’s also really honest about the actions that we need to take uh to achieve this science superpower status
In the UK uh you know it talks about what’s needed which is cultural change at the heart of Academia uh to become more diverse connected resilient engaged and inclusive and that will drive the economic social Environmental and Cultural benefits that we’re all looking for so on day one uh yesterday the UK
Team visited Scotto Enterprise Park the norwi University of the Arts and then uh Research Park uh we had some roundt discussions and we were able to demonstrate I think that we are embracing these programs and initiatives that will bring about change away from individuals being stuck in narrow academic roots and instead throughout
Their careers be able to move from Academia to Industry and back again with ease we’re not there yet um but we were talking about the programs on that journey and one of the most success successful UK programs embraced by Norwich Research Park and mentioned a lot yesterday was Pips which is
Professional internships for PhD students which aine invented so uh if later you’re stuck for a question we ask her about that um so we have people working at the ssby laboratory from Norwich City College doing tea levels and we’ve got growing recognition um of the work of technicians on the campus in
The leveling up round table there were a w wide range of examples of the need to break down barriers and create new models of working with Community uh UK’s ambition is to reposition where research and Innovation sits in the UK it should be retained by everyone not The Preserve
Of a small group of academics um ‘s talking about the human instinct to explore that we have as children why we can’t retain that as we go go through life and really that the science and Innovation that we’re working on should be by everyone and for everyone so you might say radical stuff
Or maybe it’s just being honest about what is needed to maximize the impact of research and innovation so that was a a brief look at day one uh this is day two and it’s about you uh me all of us learning more about what we can do and considering
Together how we can play our part uh to ensure that Norwich Norfolk the east of England is absolutely integral to the success of research and innovation in the UK to benefit all so I’d like to now invite professor Dame otline laser CEO of ukri to the platform for her keynote
Presentation about progress against the ukri strategy transforming tomorrow together and as well as being the CEO of ukri oine is Regis professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge and prior to this was director of the Saints laboratory at the University of Cambridge welcome to the [Applause] stage
Thank you very much for the um very kind and um insightful introduction and yeah it it is true that it is great for all of us from Uki to get out and be with the people who are really driving forward the agenda that we all know is
So important for the UK and that’s absolutely um resonates across everything that we’ve seen on this visit so far and I’m really looking forward to the discussion with you about how we can take that all further it is I think uh oops let’s see this perhaps uh exciting and critical time for research
And innovation in the UK from a kind of ukri perspective I think UK is a unique selling point for the UK we have brought together the nine councils covering all disciplines and all sectors so un unities in the form of research England working with the c their um uh
Colleagues in Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland innovate UK the UK’s Innovation agency and then the seven disciplinary research councils covering all disciplines and of course also deep engagements with both universities and the private sector and and the third sector so we’re part of that deep system across the UK um Academia business third
Sector public sector and of course International partners and and because we we bring together all of those things in one organization now we can act as a key node in the system a SMART connector and that gives us the opportunity I think to do research and Innovation
Better as a country and this is this is critical partly to build that National shared Endeavor that consensus where everybody feels that we have tools to tackle the incredible challenges that we face and that they can play a part they can be part of that that that’s a core
Part I think of of our ability to move forward as a as a nation and partly because we are a small country and that actually is a benefit we can build that much better connected system more easily than some of our larger um competitors and those larger competitors will always
Have far more money than we do us China those kinds of places we cannot invest at that kind of scale so that means every pound we invest has to be doing many things and has to be driving that join up in as much as it is funding
Individual parts and I think we can do that I think that’s an opportunity that we have as a country because we’re small we’re excellent across the board and uh we have institutions like ukri but also now a a whole new Department in government the department um for science
Um Innovation and technology that is has an explicit cross-government remit for research and Innovation which is a actually quite a revolutionary thing to happen in government have a department that has a a a cross um whitefall remit in joining up and delivering uh the full set of integrated activities that you
Need to make the economy work as an innovation Le economy um and that is encapsulated in the Science and Technology framework which is kind of the manifesto for for desit and I would encourage people to to go away and and read it if you have time because the
Framework itself I think absolutely sets out the the 10 10 different levers that you have to consider that you have to pull in an aligned way in order to drive forward this this agenda there are specific actions that are the early actions under each of
Those um uh 10 things in the in the document which is great but actually to my mind it’s the framework itself that’s critical and that will be the always always those 10 things we will need to have front and center and be doing in a join up way in order to to
Take this whole thing forward so um I have a sort of a a cartoon version of the Science and Technology framework which I think is really helpful in how we think about ourselves as a research and Innovation community and the opportunity that we have and the challenges that we face so
I think we can think about our economy really um or and our society in in the cont context of three corners of a triangle there are the high productivity um Innovative high growth businesses with the really high quality jobs there’s high quality High productivity Innovative public services and it’s only
Through getting Innovation into our public services that they will become sustainably affordable um and so all of those public services and together those two things contribute to supporting and building High highly skilled healthy thriving prosperous people and these three things are obviously deeply interconnected um you obviously need the
Highly skilled people to deliver um and work in and fill the Fantastic jobs in the High um uh productivity businesses and similarly in the public services but also of course the skills and the health and the prosperity of the people depend on the high quality public services and
Of course um the um um jobs provided but also the the services and um value ad provided by the businesses and then the the final connection obviously goes um through the jobs and the businesses to supporting the Public Services through tax and this triangle then has the potential to drive in a positive
Feedback increasing in a good way all of these things and building the kind of um uh prospering Society prospering inclusive society that we want to see but also um there is a serious danger of it driving in the opposite direction down into a debt trap where more tax is
Taken out of um um both people’s pockets and those High uh productivity businesses to support the Public Services then actually um allows those um businesses to to thrive and that de trap I think is a real risk and where our economy is at the moment I think is
Quite on the brink of being dragged into that kind of cycle which we have to avoid and there are ways to do that and that comes from thinking about those um that tax spend in more um innovative ways um one of which is one of the key pillars of the Science and Technology
Framework public procurement where we spend the tax to procure things for the high for the Public Services which of course we need um but we do that in a way that actually supports the activity of our businesses by procuring from them the products and and services that they’re delivering and then from our
Point of view and the point of view of everybody in this room the other um key way that you can invest tax sensibly to drive the positive feedback in this circle is through investing in research and and Innovation and uh funding that goes through um R&D investment does
Multiple things all at once it provides the ideas the raw material for both the innovation in business but also in the Public Services um those discoveries and and new ways of thinking about things and new ways of doing things and at the same time it supports people in our
Universities our institutes for example to to develop those ideas but that drives up skills in an in and of itself and um so those highly skilled people are then crucial to um continuing to drive this cycle around in in the positive direction so I think um our our
Job as a research and Innovation Community is to think how we should work together to ensure that this cycle moves in the right direction that’s how we get uh really a that inclusive shared vision for how we can rebuild our country in a way that works for everybody that’s um
As Ros was saying how we create a research and Innovation System that is truly by everyone and for everyone and therefore raises the um opportunities and the outcomes for people right across the country so we need some other things these are the other elements of the of the framework that I haven’t mentioned
Um the right infrastructure regulation and standards and so on it’s a very high quality document in my view that really thinks hard about how we can wire up our system to work for the UK everybody working in the system has a place um in this it’s not a threat to
Anybody on the contrary if we work together everybody will benefit and this Maps directly onto the way we think about our strategy which we’ve already heard about so our strategy uh which is now deep into the implementation phase and I’m really Keen to hear from people
How that’s working for you on the ground um we our strategy is is is built around six pillars there are um people and careers places and infrastructures ideas of all kinds um Innovation and of course the impacts to tackle key challenges like Net Zero that arise from that and
All of that of course needs us to work but better as an organization um to make sure um all of those things are delivered and um as we heard earlier to the the principles for change underpinning all of the things that we’re doing are to consider in the
Context of all of those things the full diversity of things that we need have we got the right portfolio of people of ideas of infrastructures are they properly joined up so that we actually get the benefits of that diversity are we building sufficient resilience in the
System to to um deal with um New Opportunities and and and uh risks and of course is all of this deeply engaged with communities across the country and therefore indeed reflecting of the things that people need and want and where they are so um we are as I say deep into
Implementation and our opportunity as an organization is to build that Port balanced portfolio of Investments across all of those activities with aligned incentives to drive the kind of changes that we think we need those kind of um um diversity with connectivity um and um resilience with engagement so this slide
Just has a few um key examples of the kinds of things that we’re doing um thinking in a much more integrated way about how we support PhD students through the New Deal um rolling out a different CV that recognizes a much wider range of activities than just
Papers and and previous grants so that people can move across the sector easily because you can compare people with very different career Pathways because they’re are able to set out their contributions to knowledge to supporting people to The Wider research Innovation System and and to wider communities they
Can set those out in a standard format that allows you to compare people who are very different because because they will all have made contributions in diverse ways across those four charact um um categories in the in the pathway I don’t have time to go through all of
These things but I hope what you can see is that portfolio approach where there are investments aligned with different ways of working and thinking about things that are allowing us to build the kind of research and Innovation System um that we need um yeah I’m running out of time so I
Shall simply move on that you can cut this portfolio in a variety of ways um we invest as I say across all of those um components uh I will highlight in in the context of of this region we we have nearly one and a half thousand projects uh currently led by
Award holders in the east of England 1.2 billion pounds uh a a critical investment we’re now putting into this region is the uh new um new build Next Generation infrastructure program for the John inis Center and the Saints fre laboratory which will be uh an investment of
37.7 uh million pounds over the next seven years really to transform the infrastructure for plant science on the Norwich Research Park and the critical um rationale that underpins that is to build a national Center that serves the whole of the UK as well as of course being embedded in the
Extraordinary research and Innovation ecosystem that you have here in Norwich that we’ve been enjoying and being inspired by over the last couple of days and that’s the you know a key element to this as I say one pound has to do many things it needs to invest in the NRP but
It also needs to invest in the UK and and indeed globally um where many of the challenges that we’re tackling are obviously um in International and need that International approach so I will stop there and I hope that I’ve Illustrated the kind of way we’re thinking about this and I’ll be joined
On stage by um uh my executive chair colleagues from bbsc and eslc and we’re really Keen to hear you know how it feels for you what more we could be doing and how we could be working differently to support the extraordinary work that you’re all doing thank you
So joining otline on the stage is stean Westlake executive chair of the economic and social research Council uh prior to this steer was the chief exec of the royal statistical Society he also co-author of restarting the future how to fix the intangible economy and capitalism without capital and Professor guy poppy interim
Executive chair of the biotechnology and biological science research Council and prior to this guy served as the food standards agency inaugural Chief Scientific Advisor and has published extensively on food systems and food security so this panel session we’re talking about the role of ukri as a flexible and Innovative funer and um the
Idea for this session is to get as much chance to hear from all of you um as we can in that time um and don’t forget you need to be inspiring yeah and give them some enthusiasm for Monday morning so um I I I I’m I’m happy to start um uh you know
Uh with a with a question or two but I I do know in the in the time we’ve got in the audience we’ve got some got some great people that we could start to single out so I don’t know if anybody would like to start with a comment or a
A question straight away that’s great can you hear that yeah I’m in head of commercialization at the University of Cambridge technology Transfer Company Cambridge Enterprise and I think this is exciting but I think one of the things that I observe is that we do we do a lot
Of this in at a world-class standard that doesn’t mean we should do a lot better but we still struggle to get a lot of the great Innovation outputs of this stick here and helping our economy here so I be really interested to hear on your Reflections about how you
Integrate as much as you can being a government body versus the private sort of financing sector how you’re integrating with the sort of financing activities so we can keep jobs and things located in this country because ultimately The Innovation jobs are few and far between even if we do this well
It will be the S of the jobs which are maybe less glamorous more mundane but really keep people keep people’s mortgages paid in maybe less the less fortunate part of the country to places like Cambridge I’d love to understand your perspective on that thank you absolutely I’m sure um St will want to
Come in in a minute um yeah so it’s it’s critical point we have this fantastic uh research base brilliant absolutely central part of system we’re actually pretty good at um spin outs and startups um terrific wonderful companies the bit where we seem to have more of a
Challenge is scale up um so companies scaling up and staying in the UK rather than being bought out by um overseas investors um and I’m particularly interested in how we anchor more of the high value manufacturing that emerges from some of these uh um exciting
Startups and spin outs in the UK um not so you know even if they stay here with their headquarters quite often they’re offshoring the manufacturing and quite often in terms of value into our economy much of that comes out of the manufacturing I don’t think we’re ever
Going to be it’s not I personally don’t think it’s a sensible strategy for the UK to invest in high volume low valume manufacturing I think we should focus on the relatively low volume high volume manufacturing uh lots of exciting opportunities in um the new kind of cell
And Gene therapies for example RNA um based medicines that we all know about from from the vaccine programs those kinds of things but also um more broadly uh in photonics and um Quantum quite a lot of quite exciting high value manufacturing opportunities I think and
So um how do we do that so absolutely ukri has a role to play in the way it supports startups to think about that longer term trajectory so things like the innovate UK Edge program so helping our Founders as best we can um to to think about what they’re going to do
Next and not to think that I mean it would encourage people not just to think they’re going to sell out at some early stage that’s one thing um there is an interesting discussion about whether our our full set of funding across that that early stage is balanced correctly are
People spinning out a little bit too soon so that they can access funding sources um that are available to companies that are not available um for example in in in a in a Institute or an academic base that is working up an idea is there enough pre concept funding
That’s another thing that is often discussed but then more broadly how we can support the um patient Capital Community um to build up confidence for those investors to to put money into um scaleup uh is a very interesting question that’s another um key element that I think often is flagged as not
Working as well in the UK could be I have a personal um uh priority because I think almost all of those problems would be would be reduced solved helped if we had much greater career path diversity in our research and Innovation System if it wasn’t academics working in Academia
Finance people working in finance and Founders trying to found companies if we had much more churn of people across those communities including the policy Community or or our tax incentives write all of those kinds of things um so I have that as a top priority it’s not a
Quick fix but I I think it would fix a very large number of things that are wrong with our system and that key problem um being one of them I mean just to to to build on that I think um I I couldn’t agree more with the importance of all the various
Incentives and um we know that things like providing access to risk capital and growth Capital there there are important roles for public programs in making that happen but I think ‘s absolutely right to finish on this point about the importance of people in all of this and
One of the things I found so inspiring about our visit to Norwich Science Park yesterday in some of the conversations was meeting the relatively early career researchers in many cases who because they’ve been on PHD programs that had included the opportunity to go into industry or to undertake impact
Acceleration account projects that have give them the opportunity to work with businesses that they had had a bit more of that mindset a bit more of a mindset that says there is a world outside Academia or equally for people in business to realize that Academia has a wealth of
Insights it can offer for for for for for productive and high growth firms and I think a really important role that UK is playing whether it’s through the design of PhD funding whether it’s opportunities further on whether it’s things like impact acceleration accounts is to try and create an environment
Where our people more and more have one foot in both of those camps so they’re more willing to take up these opportunities when when they come about did you want to come in just very briefly I think the other thing which uh is hopefully beginning to be well
Illustrated is the fact that as oing described the coming together of different disciplinary councils with research England and innovate UK means that um the communities at different stages in the evolution of doing that well can talk to one another and learn from each other me BBs RC has a series
Of innovation campuses based around a lot of the supported institutes who who are here today and and that is a successful development but be being able to perhaps work very very closely as part of the same organization with innovate UK or epir which have done this
Sort of thing in their work or talking with Stan about some of the sort of the actual policy drivers and the financial markets means I think we can share information together and learn from each other other to drive it forward in a way in which five or six years ago we were
Perhap perhaps a little bit more siloed in our thinking and so the the the theme of being connected to understand the problem and the solutions is is possibly um what this is about and I just I wondered from the Cambridge Enterprise perspective um what role we could all play to understand and potentially
Influence Venture calist exit strategies because really that’s that’s a big part of the that that’s what partly influences what happens next to a company once they’ve gone through some good programs they’ve got themselves established they’ve been around for a while they’re successful that exit is is heavily influenced by by The Venture
Capital funding is it not it absolutely is and of course it’s there huge number of variables there um I think it’s partly to do with the way the Venture investment Works in this country and partly to do with the cultural Outlook and I think we’ probably got to
Help not only change people’s views about whether whe where they wish to work and how their career profile goes and that sort of stuff but actually what their aspirations is and I think there is quite there remains quite a prevalent after aspiration which is um if I can only get7 million pound in
My bank account I’m done I think the Americans def that as less politely as excuse me the fu money um and and I think which means you don’t have to play any further whereas the aspiration to build something really really big common commonly is not as big here and I’m
Reminded by a very good American friend of mine who was in my team now doing great stuff in Cambridge he said you don’t have this culture of even if you’re just mowing lawns in this country I’m going to have the best lawn mowing business in Louisiana was his comment
And I think we need to we need to think about that beyond all the career structures and and change that aspiration about what you’re doing and why you would do it but I suppose what I’m saying is as well as the individual there’s the heavy influence of the of
The funding that’s there and I think it might be another group that we want to embrace and say you know how can we influence those decisions and get them confident about continuing to invest and continuing their exit but in to continue in the UK and and helping them believe
That they can build those businesses rather than in the pror of term spare parts businesses which are ingested and consumed but actually businesses can be do that kind of high value low volume manufacturing and decide to locate it in well I don’t care anywhere else than
The rest of the country I think that’s a really important cultural change that is and I am British but I think there a very British Outlook that we need to have much much more aspiration for that and and to give you a personal perspective I’ve got two good wouldbe
God kids who want to go into this kind of thing one’s a mathan one’s a medic I’ve got my son wants to be a biochemist and my daughter an engineer and i’ and I have to look them in the eye well I maybe well maybe maybe maybe not but
When they look you in the eye and you think what would I say to them if you said if you want aspiration right now you have to leave the country and that’s and I have to say that as a person and I think that’s a very telling story and I
Don’t want that to happen but when I know them as people I care about individually I think that’s something we need to change okay and so can I bring Stellar in I’m I’m sorry I’m putting you on the spot I should have said I would want to bring you in next from the
Innovate UK’s perspective on all of this with the funding um at the early stages but also the exits and and what innovate can do or wants to do to influence this growth of businesses that start here they’re high growth companies they stay here how do we do that from your
Perspective thank you well so hi everybody I’m Stella pce um I’m work at innovate UK I’m the executive director for Healthy Living and agriculture so from and our role at innovate UK is to inspire people to get involved in Innovation it’s to involve PE it is to
Involve and connect people and it’s also to drive investment so we have a number of different products and services that help that I think we’ve already mentioned Edge for example um um we’re particularly active maybe I should comment given the The Exchange we had around developing with investors and
Working with them so that we can help to drisk and then bring investors into that process but um yeah I think there’s there’s a lot of work to do to continue that you’re absolutely right so um so yes I think innovate UK are definitely on that Journey please let us you know
Work with you on that and increasingly as well connecting with our colleagues across the research councils great thanks sir is anyone else want to volunteer a question otherwise I’ll pick on someone okay that’s fine over this slide hi I’m Angela cart from rothamstead research I do I do do get
The focus on the one pound uh ratio but of course we can have an impact through many different Pathways policy Society you know translation into practice I think what would help us is having a very a more clever way of turning that into pounds per value because it’s often very
Difficult to show that metric and yet we do it really really well in universities and all our institutes those different routes to impact which do affect large numbers of people and the way we do things in the UK how can we capture that is there some help that we could get on
Better smarter economic ways of expressing that which would add value to your one pound often you have to go back to looking at spin outs indicators for industrial funding but there could be many other ways we could capture it if we knew how to do it better absolutely I
Think I’m going to pass that one straight to Sten because it’s very much in his sights I would say it’s it’s an absolutely vital question and to some extent the underpinning of everything that we do from a funding point of view provision of Public Funding depends on
Being able to make a really credible case to government but also to the public that investing in R&D effectively makes their lives better treasury care about money but ultimately people care about evidence that this is making their lives better um I think there’s a number of
Approaches as you say for some of the economic things there has been I think a lot of hard work done over the last 20 years to develop increasingly effective ways of showing the economic returns from the public money that gets invested in R&D and the work that everyone in the
R&D system does um it’s been very the the quality of that work from an economic point of view has improved over time I think it’s become more and more compelling for the people in central government who make these decisions but you’re absolutely right that that is a very impoverished depiction of what R&D
The benefits that research and Innovation deliver and I think that’s why it’s always going to be important I I think it’s important to try and measure the benefits to things like Health where there is a good there was at least some basis for quantifying things but I think there’s also a really
Important narrative role here um you know politicians deal in narratives because that’s what voters think about and I think it’s really important that we continue to keep thinking about the stories and keep thinking about the stories from the point of view not just of ourselves as experts in our own areas
Of research but from the point of view well what would this mean for for for for for people so although I’m personally an Enthusiast for quantifying things I think we need to make sure that in justify what we do we leave a big part for narrative we keep on making
Those stories and um we tell them in as eloquent ways as we as we possibly can good yeah ju and and just to add I I think one the combination of the narrative and and some quantitative metrics is very powerful but but I think there has been a lot of advance in
Looking at the the non-monetary capital so so looking at social capital and natural capital and and and these types of things you know are becoming quite uh important and I think the rise of aspects around ecosystem Services where it’s beginning to put a range of values on Services which are provide from
Provided from natural capital I suppose when you monitorize that it can get slightly difficult for instance I I think I saw a figure that uh if you can see a green field from your bedroom it’s worth 350 a year so I mean you know how that figure is derived I don’t know but
But but these sorts of things you know do do enable looking at different capitals and then perhaps putting a monetary value on okay so do we have some people that want to talk about um the impacts that their projects that they’re involved with are having the narrative have we got people that would
Like to to to mention not just the sort of uh economic value of their project but the social environmental um societal impact I’m going to pick on people if not well you I’m going to say yeah an okay great we’ve got some volunteers we’ll go around the room we’ll take all of those
Volunteers some ideas so I’m an Osborne from the jist center and um I just want to underline the importance of social Enterprise and what that can do for Community collaboration culture and um there’s a huge amount of work that that goes on already that many of us are
Involved in and Norwich I think and region is extremely well positioned to capitalize it’s you know it’s well known for its science but it’s also hugely well known for its Arts and Humanities and although there is there is collaboration between the two Norwich could be the region could be World
Leading it could be a test base for really pushing the limits on that and I think there is the willingness to do it and there are lots of activities ongoing but there needs to be a bigger vision ision which is difficult but it’s as tin was saying you know there would be
Something in it for everybody and there would be a huge amount of added value brilliant there a a guy behind that’s right Simon cook The babam Institute um in terms of the narrative and carrying the public with you I think it’s very important that we take a more democratic
Approach to our public engagement activities explaining to the to to the public what we’re doing what we’re achieving and we’re certainly doing that at babam um a lot of our PE activities used to be based in Cambridge and at the Cambridge Science Festival I would argue that we were preaching to the converted
There in fact passively we were contributing to further inequalities really so we’ve we’ve completely changed what we’re doing we’re targeting all public engagement and Outreach activities to areas of lowest social mobility and highest deprivation in the east of England now and we I I would argue very strongly that we’re having a
Much larger Delta in terms of reaching people and and and teaching them the importance of Science and innovation in their to their ordinary lives and I think that’s something that we all need to do was there someone else that had their hand up to wanted to bring a project to
To the room no do you have some um questions from the the back Nick so it’s just to pick up that point on social impact of course I think ukri captures this really well through the research Excellence framework uh so the University sector captures its social impact extraordinarily well um I think
Perhaps the work that needs to be done is to try and broaden that across the whole research ecosystem and then utilize that data to to keep making the case that otene articulated to government um to uh to really capture that and and and that I think would address some of like Angela’s point
About the way in which social impact and the point that an just raised more fully it’s because it’s captured very well in parts of the sector but not all of the sector and that’s probably an area that uh that that still needs further development as um as it progresses as as
As UK progresses to think about the integration of the whole research ecosystem brilliant thanks and Sophie do do we have some questions from the online audience uh yes we do um so the first question is what role will digital technology and in particular AI play in
Terms of the future of of work and how will UK strategy support that well that that that’s just a little question yeah a small topic goodness so I mean obviously AI is is transforming everything that we do um uh we big sense um across the world it’s a very exciting and Powerful technology
It’s a whole set of Technologies actually and it will have impact pretty much everywhere and again one of the things that I excited about from the point of view of UK’s contribution is we’ve you know one of the reasons the UK is in a strong position on AI is because
Of many many years of investment in in uh the relevant uh research communities as um the technologies have developed and we can do it now in an integrated way so our big new AI programs have responsible AI embedded right from the beginning and that’s the trick for all of this it’s making sure
That the extraordinary opportunities from AI are captured um in a way that mitigates as far as possible the harms and in a way that delivers those opportunities um right across our society and you know it’s very you know that’s a very very general answer but because the number of specific answers are huge
We’re having an interesting conversation at the moment about the role of chat GTP in writing grants for example um and uh it can go then right through of course to how we can use AI to improve productivity in the health system um as in that triangle diagram I said but in
The way that obviously um people are comfortable with and self guards safeguards patient um you know not only safeguards patient safety but actually increases the the quality of care that people are getting so lots to do and and very exciting to have the AI Summit um coming up where we the
UK is really taking a lead role in in bringing together Nations to talk about all of these challenges upfront so that globally we also get the the maximum benefits from these Technologies without um or in a way that mitigates as far as possible the risks do you want to add
Anybody um I mean I think what what’s what’s f fting for me about that question is as well as a question about how UK operates it’s a social science question it’s a question about how will a particular instance of a new technology transformed society and from
A social science point of view I’d say many of those questions are really understudied and that’s something that um we with our research communities I think are Keen to do something about case in point I’m involved in a government panel on un trying to understand the the implications of AI
For the value and usage of government data sets it’s probably one of about 10,000 different problems like that that require solutions that are quite complex and it’s fascinating when we look at the underlying evidence that you would expect to rely on for those kind of questions economic questions about
Valuation legal questions and indeed AI technical questions about what the value of particular data sets are we kind of come up with aity of evidence and aity of research now on the one hand that’s worrying because we do need to make decisions and it’s nice to be able to
Make decisions in an Evidence Rich environment on the other hand as a research funer that’s also kind of exciting because it’s good to know that there are important questions that research can help us provide the answer to so we hope we working with you and The Wider research communities can can
Can take those things forward I was going to write into chat GPT to offer the answer to that question but I didn’t have time to get my phone out but but but but seriously I think you I think the really interesting and wonderful opportunity here is for th for
Those kind of computer scientists and and other people who are kind of developing AI to work together with the kind of the social scientists in understanding kind of how best to adopt that to work with Society in the sense of you know what what is acceptable what is responsible and to work with
Government in the sense of you know where are some of our biggest challenges Etc which I think means that the the likelihood of developing the technology which will have the impact you want for from it is much greater than perhaps if we look historically there there are more than one occasion when innovation
Has run ahead of social acceptance and uh and various things and then it doesn’t deliver ultimately what you want and that can sto things so I so I think it’s actually working across the piece where something like this can have the impact that undoubtedly it’s likely to
Have thank you I need to look at to my colleagues at the back of the room to check if we’re out of time I’m conscious of time we probably do need to but I think we this is the start a very small amount has been um covered here
Considering how many good people we have in the room today but um you know I do know that um the team’s intention is that is to make this a shared Endeavor that you’ve been invited because genuinely Uki wants to work with all of on this um and continue the conversation
Was the commitment so I think we should probably end up with a series of genuine if you want to do it some teams call um or so people don’t have to battle the rain we’ll get the people that we want around the table to talk about how this
Is working and really dig into more detail so um thank you all thank you to the [Applause] panel there second panel we’re going forward from um that first one where we looked at ukri as an agile flexible and an in Innovative funder the second panel is looking more at the regional
Dimension and over the last two days we’ve had a lot of discussions um around that um the panel is drawn from um a number of different is drawn from a number of different um sectors and have a number of different viewpoints and I’m delighted to um have a chance of
Introducing them the fifth panelist is just about to join us which is fantastic perfect timing do uh do join us Chloe um the idea the structure of this panel is that um four of the panelists are going to do thought pieces five minute thought pieces um and then after that we’re
Going to open it up to questions and answers and talking to UK before this they were very clear that they don’t necessarily want that questions being fired answers being given but more of a conversation more of a discussion about where they’re at and where they can play a part in the regional Economic
Development the regional development of rni um and I’ve been very impressed um not just over the last two days I took part in a round table yesterday um um chaired by steam looking at this Regional Dimension but all of the conversations all of the strategy that I’ve heard from ukri been very impressed
With the way that they are developing as a funer and appear certainly to be listening to the uh the sector in a very meaningful way so before we do the thought pieces I’ll just do some brief introductions about the uh panel so first off we’ve got the right honorable
Uh Chloe Smith the MP for Norwich North since 2009 she’s previously been the Secretary of State for science Innovation and Technology uh between April and July 2023 when Michelle Donan was on maternity leave her previous ministerial positions include Secretary of State for work and pensions minister of State for
Disabled people health and work and minister of State for Constitution and Devolution she studied English at York and worked at for deot before entering Parliament and two I wasn’t I wasn’t sure if that was Thunder or a plane taking off um so so two clear connections um with uh the
Area that I cover so I’m director of Eastern Ark which brings together the universities of UEA Essex and Kent so very much a regional role and Khloe has two clear connections with that the first is she was born in Ashford in Kent so um a clear kentish connection but um
You heard it here first she’s just about to be awarded an honorary degree from UEA so congratulations on that Chloe the um second speaker is Anne Osborne Anne is um a microbial and plant biologist her research focuses on plant natural products biosynthesis function and mechanisms of metabolic diversification her discovery that the
Genes for many of these Pathways were organized in clusters in plant genomes like beads on a string has greatly accelerated the ability to find new Pathways and chemistries of potential importance for the development of drugs and other useful compounds in 2023 she re uh she received the noin prize for her
Pioneering research she’s also a poet and founder and leads the science art and writing initiative an interdisciplinary Science Education outreach program and we were talking earlier about her poetry around Rockall maybe we can touch on that at some point and finally uh Professor Andrew lover is Professor of geography at UEA he joined
UEA in 1990 from University of Lancaster and his academic background is in human geography he’s got particular interests in issues of rural land use natural capital and ecosystem Services the kind of things that guy uh mentioned um in his piece uh as well as Future Energy Pathways en catchment management he has
And is currently working on many pan ukri program specifically across nerk and uh esrc and he has very kindly uh been involved in podcasts Eastern art podcasts around natural Capital which I found fascinating so with that I’ll hand over to Chloe as the first um speaker to give a five minute thought
Pee thank you very thank you very much indeed and it’s um an absolute pleasure to uh join you this morning and I hope that many of you have had a safe journey here considering the rain and um some of the conditions uh going on and getting here but I
Wanted to begin by thanking uh otene and all of the ukri team for uh coming here to norid and to uh and to norol as part of your uh Grand Tour I think it’s excellent that you’ve done so and that’s not only because you all have seen
Already uh the huge quality that is here to welcome you uh in Norwich um but but also because of the impact Beyond norch and I hope that’s come out uh actually loud and clear in in your work uh yesterday uh and the rest of today uh
Three points uh from me to help uh situate this panel’s discussion I wanted to touch on the impact of UK’s work in Norwich uh and why it matters uh and then secondly a few National considerations and indeed thirdly some International points to accompany that um as you will have heard uh today and
As many you will already know uh the impact uh to Norwich to nor and to the east of England uh of the uh allocations via ukri is significant and we’re talking as I understand it about a value across the east of England of over a billion pounds uh and of course that
Reflects in many cases the huge strengths uh that we uh will know and value in Norwich and that indeed I reflected on the panel for example plant and microbial science um but as the previous discussion also just pointed out this is about getting to value in
People’s real lives is it not and we can see some of that when we start to pursue the gva figures uh so for example I was struck by the bbsrc report just out I think last week that talks about 900 million pounds of gva from 10 years of
Wheat research and let’s have more of that three cheers for the wheat researchers because in all seriousness that is how we begin to translate the work of UK U UK into uh our local economy and of course as has already been touched on this morning it’s not
Just the economy in terms of pounds uh and Pence we can also see uh the value the huge value uh of much of the uh medical clinical social research uh that the institutions here do and indeed the Arts and Humanities and I’m so looking
Forward to a bit of poetry to help us uh underline that point we do need I think a better way of expressing all of this though as as previous uh audience questions really just underlined we all want to be able to be sure on outcomes and not just
Inputs I think the point that was just made a second ago about narratives is essential actually and it was something that uh I had a very powerful discussion with with some early career scientists uh at the NRP just a few months ago because we were looking at how
Scientists uh and politicians need to be able to work together to do each of their two halves of a job to be able to get to uh good Public Service which is based on rooted in uh science and evidence indeed when I was leading the department for science Innovation and
Technology which was a wonderful privilege to do just earlier this year uh and in doing so I I laid the annual report of ukri in Parliament so uh it’s it’s great to to close the loop here today but when I was doing that role I
Was very struck by the fact that I was not going to be the foremost scientist in the room clearly I was not there to be the expert in any one of the fields but what I was there to do was to provide lay leadership and what I mean by that is democratic accountability
Because at the end of all of this this is taxpayers money so taxpayers quite rightly quite constitutionally correctly want accountability for that and the best way to get to that is to demonstrate the value that is being delivered let me just briefly uh raise some uh two national considerations to
To to flavor our discussions this morning uh the first is about how we uh leverage uh private investment in a alongside public investment and I think this is absolutely critical uh you see it indeed reflected in in the sort of the mission that the government uh has
Set itself uh about doing this around the country and you see it I think particularly strongly here in the discourse uh that you have had with uh those of us in in Norwich and those who are trying to commercialize the excellent research uh that we see coming
Out of the uh the NRP and all of the institutions um the other point then is about spreading that investment Beyond uh London beyond the greater Southeast and I say that with a little bit of trepidation in this room because I’m I’m sure this will already have come out in
Conversation but there’s quite a nuanced relationship for norch with the greater Southeast we hugely value what is uh capable of being done in Oxford and Cambridge in London and on whichever geographical definition you choose to take we MO or may not be part of the southeast but the point is we want to
See that uh value being spread even further and I’m fairly sure there are communities here in uh rural Norfolk that would say today that they hadn’t seen a bit of it and would like very much to be part of all of that mission ukri also um I think has some challenges
Of its own which is fair to uh highlight here and many of you may have seen the uh the grant review which goes into this in some detail but given the history that ukri has come through of having been merged from multiple organizations those challenges are very uh pertinent
Actually to our quest to be able to get uh Regional Clarity and Regional value because for example uh as as Grant pointed out even uh the regional data that is capable of being produced is coming from fragmented systems and so we strongly support ukri and being able to
Complete that Improvement journey to do all of that job better both regionally and nationally the final thing I wanted to to mention before I’m I’m sure I’m out of my 5 minutes is just Why all this matters in the international uh race and I do think there is something of a race
Going on uh technology was already mentioned in the in the previous question uh and it is clear for all to see that there is uh a huge role for Academia but also for commercial practitioners in terms of AI in terms of capturing the benefits of Technology capturing the opportunity and we hope uh
Ensuring against the risk and that is of course a very big flavor to a major uh National and international debate that is going on at present uh and I also finally wanted to touch on the uh work of the department for science Innovation and Tech in trying to position the UK as
At the front of that race and that’s not only in technology that’s also in science in Innovation uh that is I think a mission that we would all uh share uh and in doing so we will be using so many Partnerships across the globe I was really pleased that we were able to
Secure the Horizon deal but of course let’s look beyond the horizons of horizon uh because there are many many more Partnerships uh available globally that will assist in bringing all this to a reality I’ll pause there and look forward to the rest of the panel thank [Applause]
You thank you very much Chloe there’s a lot to pick up on there so start to think about some of those questions those thoughts that you might want to feedback to Chloe or to the panel generally um I see that Andrew slid is up next so Andrew can I hand over to
You good morning everyone it’s a pleasure to be here um I’m Andrew LT I’m actually Norwich born uh I was born in Norwich grew up in the city went to University and worked uh Elsewhere for a while been back in Norwich since 1990 I’m a geographer by background I
Specialize in the use of geographical Information Systems essentially computers uh working with all sorts of spatial data and Maps hence the kinds of things that you can s and see on the slide and then particularly interested in how they can be used to address all sorts of different types of
Sustainability challenges so what you can see on the slide is a sort of sample of projects that I’ve worked on in the past 10 years I’ve worked with Farmers I’ve worked with local authorities I’ve worked with all sorts of environmental NOS the new Anglia LEP and energy and
Water businesses so we worked with farmers in the wiom test catchment project to look at how we could improve both business efficiency and Environmental Quality I worked a lot on things to do with natural Capital so we created an online natural Capital evidence compendium for norak and suffk and I’m
Now working on the local nature recovery strategy for the region and I’ve got an interest in how we can use spatial data to improve uh the use of renewable energy and I’ve been working with local authorities UK power networks the greater Southeast energy Hub and so forth to do those kinds of
Things it’s I think important to say that I’ve done a lot of these projects very few of them have actually been directly funded by ukri or the constituent research counil but a lot of them have benefited from the sorts of expertise that’s been gained in those
Kinds of projects as well I’ve tried to flag some examples of that on the slide so I would say there’s a very important Synergy between the two in my experience Regional Partners really Val value the Knowledge and Skills that academics can bring but the independence is often important as well
As especially where there are different organizations and challenges and debates about the best ways of doing things I found that particularly working with farmers and land owners building trust is very important and that takes a bit of time but to do these sorts of projects you’ve also sometimes got to be
Able to respond quite flexibly and quickly I’ve been very fortunate to have two researchers work at me with me at UEA for over 20 years they’ve had multiple short-term contracts we would not be able to do the projects that we’ve done if we didn’t have that kind of research capacity so
Making sure that kind of thing is in place is in my opinion really important in terms of building these sorts of regional collaborations and the benefits that can come from them and then to finish where they like to sort of raise the issue well is this worthwhile because personally I’ve had comments
Both from research Council reviewers and indeed colleagues at UEA that it’s too parochial uh you know you should be concentrating on the big Global challenges rather than for instance what’s going on in farms in uh ham or something like that but I think you can do things at the local level that give
Us really important insights nationally and internationally UEA has a not the motto do different and we’ve recently launched launched a new Civic Charter sort of marking our commitment to the region and as a Norwich born person personally I found it really satisfying to be able to
Make a difference in a place that I’m really proud to call home thank you very [Applause] much thank you Andrew very inspiring there’s uh a few things where I was making notes the building of trust is clearly something which is crucial to all of our work on a regional uh basis
Responding flexibly and quickly once again very important and building up research capacity and the fact that acting locally doesn’t mean parochial there’s a lot of relevance to what we do in the region that will have impacts nationally and internationally so thank you for that over to our next speaker an
Sorry okay thanks very much so now for something a little bit different my lab works I’m at the jist center and my lab works on trying to understand how plants make chemicals particularly the the chemicals that are important as drugs and as new drug leads plants are a treasure Trove of chemistry
But we don’t understand for the most part how they do this so first I wanted to just show you an example because I think it helps to give a feel for how the uh research system works in this regard and so what you can see on this
Slide and also on the side is a timeline for a case study where we became interested in a particular tree which you can see on the top right which grows in a certain part of Chile and the reason that this tree is so important is because it makes a particular chemical
Which you can sort of see down at the bottom right it doesn’t matter what that chemical is let’s just say it’s structurally very challenging and complicated and the only way to access this chemical is by extracting it from the bark of the tree which only grows in a certain part
Of Chile so why is this important it’s important because for random reasons I don’t need to go into that chemical was found to play a critical role in stimulating the immune system when we receive vaccines and so it was approved for use in vaccines human vaccines in 20
2017 and it’s now in vaccines for shingles malaria coid respiratory virus 20 other vaccines in development this has meant there’s been a run on the tree because there’s no other way of getting the compound and indeed I heard that during the uh coid crisis the US Army were actually guarding those trees in
Chile so it’s a highly valuable molecule and the demand for it is continuing to increase it happens to be the sort of molecule that through 20 odd years of uh research in my lab we gained experience of working on through uh a lot of funding from ukri particularly from bbsrc also from
Epsrc from us funding agencies the ni for example and from the European Union and so we’d sort of warmed ourselves up to take on the challenge of of tackling the problem of how to understanding how the tree makes the chemical and we start started this process in
2017 with £20,000 from a flexible fund at John inis to promote Innovation and this enabled us to do some preliminary work with the tree to do some sequencing which we did with the eram Institute also in Norwich and then in 2018 I won a translational award from
Bbsrc a two-year fund 1.6 million to progress this project which we then did and then uh we sequenced the Genome of the tree so that we could start to understand the instruction manual that would tell us how the chemistry was being done during the process of this project which I wasn’t talking about
Publicly I was approached at a bbsrc funded Network in industrial biotechnology and bioenergy by somebody from a big farmer company who said we think you might be able to help us and eventually with a lot of work from our uh Tech Transfer Company and our business Business
Development people we got a grant in place an award from Big farmer of over2 million pounds of direct funding into my lab to continue this work of understanding how the tree does the chemistry ultimately we’ve now finished all of that work we understand the whole of the chemical process and this now
Opens up the opportunity to make this molecule and also variants of it which are actually better as imuno stimulants they’re less toxic uh and they’re better at imuno stimulation using the instruction manual from the tree so I’m showing you this as an example because it started with a a a
Huge body of fundamental research and it’s now gone through uh to a to a position where we understand the whole pathway we have patents filed on it there’s a an arrangement with big farmer who have a an option on it so my work my lab does work on not
Just this tree but it’s agnostic it wants to understand it’s very ambitious how the plants how the plant kingdom does its chemistry so if we have multiple sequences and The erum Institute amongst other places is an outstanding place for generating plant genome sequences we can start to decode
The whole of the instruction manual and we can put it to work to make chemicals plants have been known as a source of drugs and Therapeutics for thousands of years and so we can start to think really big about using the Big Data that’s emerging from plant genomics we
Have a very very rapid and Powerful transient expression system which I won’t go into now which enables us to take the information from those genomes and put them to work and turn them into chemistry and we’re using AI machine learning based approaches to help us to filter the information from all these
Plant genome sequences but importantly also uh to work out what are the chemical features of a good drug how can we use machine learning to design drugs there are companies out there that do this but importantly they’re not able to then make them because the vast majority
Of these molecules cannot be made with a chemical kit in the laboratory we have to use learnings from nature so if it’s possible to animate the slide and press the button so you won’t be able to see this at all but down the bottom a couple
Of outcomes from this are that based on um the work that that we’ve been doing we’ve now secured funding for seed funding for a company 2.7 million and we have a heads of terms in place we have a Consortium of four investors so we’re very excited about
Getting that off the ground on the Norwich Research Park hopefully by the end of the year maybe early next year so that’s very exciting I’ve also managed to get four and a half million pounds from welcome a discovery award and that’s for eight years so that’s big
Money for academic research and I think ukri is fantastic at funding our research it’s it’s it’s been invaluable but having the the space and the freedom to really take on big challenges with large amounts of funding for more than two or three years is a a huge thing uh and we also have
Another bbss translational award to take the learnings from the tree to make designer vaccine adant imuno stimulants so the challenges we’ve faced um it’s been a whole experience thus far and we’re only at the beginning of working out how to go down the commercialization route we’ve been
Talking to investors for years and those discussions have been very useful often in realizing we don’t have our pitch right or we do need to answer certain questions there’s also uh a very conservative attitude in general in big Farmer they want to be able to synthesize chemicals using uh using
Chemistry they’re wary of natural products they’re wary of doing things different they’re certainly wary of moving from their comfort zone of making things in microbes by fermentation to in our case making things through expression in a very powerful plant system but hopefully um hot house Therapeutics the
Name of the company as it grows and expands will overcome those hurdles it’ll get it’s a platform company our initial investors are generalists they’re not farma Specialists but if we can get our first therapeutic through into the pipeline then we hope we’ll attract more specialist investors and as
The company grows and expands uh we anticipate that uh it will be feeding projects into other structures in in the region including the umum Institute and its Foundry you could say what we’re doing is engineering biology which is a very hot area at the moment um and working with Leaf expression systems
Also on the Norwich Research Park who are a cro doing transient plant expression another enabler and we have big big Visions you know we don’t want to just sell out after two years we want to be bigger than Ginko bioworks so you know we’re thinking big probably be crying in two years [Applause]
But thank you very much an um I think the point’s made and that’s a great case study of how we need to think long term um and we often need a variety of funders feeding into that development from fundamental research through to Innovation and application um two very
Key points that uh are worth thinking about in our discussions that are going to follow this the final speaker who’s going to give her thought piece is Ros so over to you there should be a slide if that could be okay so the how research and Innovation
Is a driver for regional and local growth from my perspective is about Norwich Research Park obviously um as as the science park manager there and we want to be a force for good and economic prosperity in Norfolk and the UK for Global Investors um we are an hours flight from uh
Skipo to those that live in the rural and coastal areas of Norfolk with the city in the center if you are a plant scientist anywhere in the world this will be on the bucket list of places that you’ll want to work in your career and if you’re growing a company like colorific
And Tropic some of these amazing companies that we’ve got on site then it’s a good place for them to help attract and retain the best people because of the quality of life and the housing so UK’s ambition is to make research and Innovation more accessible more porous encouraging people to flow
Uh from Academia into business and back again and and we want to help to try and do this in any way we can at Norwich Research Park so our C campus is one of the largest research clusters in Europe we’ve got the University of East Anglia norol and Norge University Hospital four
Research institutes there’s a shared vision for growth of the campus there’s over 30 companies there we’ve we’ve got 1.6 million square fet of planning consent it is a growing cluster it’s part of an ecosystem it’s contributing to the local economy it’s championing equality we’re reaching out to schools
We’re creating new jobs in science and Innovation and construction management marketing events catering Finance accountancy legal IP management and it’s all about people me you all of us can play our part um benefit now in our careers but also lay the foundations for future Generations um and what’s really key is
That us being a place means that it’s not theoretical it’s not just an idea it’s an inspiring location that’s able to harness the power of research and Innovation delivering a campus-wide Enterprise strategy creating a sense of community being a catalyst for multidisciplinary teams hosting industry events creating spinouts creating desire for the
Location attracting long-term patient Capital attracting Venture Capital funding inspiring young people about this place as the future uh of the workforce so with the help and support of UK to change the way that we work to create the systems where people can move freely between Academia and business we
Can definitely do more but knowing what to do and how to do it really well means that we can help others in the UK to do the same um maximize the potential of research and Innovation and benefits to society and the economy in the whole of
The UK uh UK ukri could use norwi Research Park as a pilot as a test bed to look at how to maximize research and Innovation through the campus-wide initiatives that we’ve got and we can help apply those to other areas with science parks and research Innovation campuses across the UK thank [Applause]
You thank you Ross that was uh a great way to end an inspiring list of thought pieces thinking about um issues of place not being a theoretical um a theoretical thing in this virtual world it’s very easy to to forget the importance of place and the fact that
Place is a serious entity and some and and has to be taken into account in terms of bringing people together the con the connectivity that you talked about uh in terms of what Norwich can offer that’s very useful so we’ve got about 225 minutes for questions for discussions for thoughts for
Comments I’ve got some to kick off but I’d very much like to hear from the audience about their thoughts on anything they’ve heard about uh from the thought pieces any considerations that those thought pieces have uh triggered in their own mind um and leading on perhaps from our first panel as well the
The role of ukri in developing that Regional research and Innovation um capacity and the economic development side of things I see a hand uh straight away so the lady over there thank you so much for absolutely fantastic overview of thoughts pieces and and getting our brains going it’s
Berri um schlab brittley from the British Antarctic Survey I um was very interested in hearing the um the plans for expansion that uh the the research Park in the area here has as well and making a link to what um OT mentioned earlier in terms of UK’s uh strong focus
On thought and practical leadership in uh Global issues such as uh achieving Net Zero I wonder how is this going to be showcased here in that we want growth we want expansion we have to do it in a way that that is fully sustainable be it
Net Zero be it biodiversity um so how is that going to be achieved by um the regional leadership and how is ukri going to be supporting this and and using the leverage uh that it has to ensure that when we grow we do so taking full account of all the data that as
Researchers we are bringing forward to showcase the urgency of the biodiversity and the climate crises um and how are we going to be leaders in this area thanks very much Ross do you want to go first I’m happy so there’s 1.6 million square feet of planning consent
We can we can build out lots of new buildings that are going to be the facilities that these high growth companies that we’re hoping are going to stay we will want to take and what we need to do at nor Research Park is maximize the potential of all of the
Research expertise the technology platforms the people and do that by having uh collocation of businesses and the researchers to work with each other and collaborate so that’s the the vision for the park is is indeed to to attract more people to create jobs to help companies to grow and help them to
Access all of the um ukri funded research but we need to do that in a sustainable way and you need to look at the all of the different um actions that you can take to limit impact on climate change which can be to do with renewable
Energy it can be to do with the the way that that buildings are built and um the different targets that we look at like like briam and there are other there are other tests as well um looking at biodiversity Master planning the place that it is a a pleasant place for
Everybody but it takes care of you know the the the types of plants and animals that need to exist and and and it adds to everybody’s um experience of a place if all of those things are are looked at and are as important and and I think you’re talking about Green net zero
Environment but ESG is also social in governance and I think it’s so important to talk about the fact that we need to be on the right side of of of uh social justice issues and Champion equality and be a beacon for for equality as well and
Also on the social side um I’m so passionate about making sure that if we can’t get it right at least we’re helping young people to step in where we leave and for them to get it right so it it you know being accessible um being welcoming being inclusive and looking at
Our carbon footprint how people travel to earth what buildings we build and and being mindful of the environment and creating a beautiful environment that adds to that area that’s why I love the job because it’s all of those things all every day thanks Ros otene do you want
To add to that from a a national perspective I mean so obviously this is a a huge issue for the whole country and indeed the world we need to re-engineer our economy um to a fully circular sustainable Net Zero economy it’s huge and um every single one of us needs to
Do our bit at every single scale and so of course from UK’s point of view we have as you know an ambition for our estate to be Net Zero by 2040 and um we have embedded in our infrastructure program um so for example the the np3 um program that we’re supporting here very
Um exacting environmental standards um but we also know know that it’s not easy um in your position at at uh Bas huge amount of incredibly high quality Environmental Research going on but it it itself has quite a substantial carbon footprint um everybody knows about the very wonderful um sve dbra research
Vessel it’s a it’s a really critical asset for us in our Environmental Research but it burns Diesel and um so everything we do we need to be asking that question always and indeed you know cross UK right it’s embedded on every single one of our papers there are a
Couple of questions we we always ask about everything and and that is one of them are we a shiny example we’ve got a long way to go still to to have that as a early kind of knee-jerk reaction to everything that we do um in all kinds of
Areas it’s um you know of course building and so on but um we were talking about AI earlier compute is going to be one of the biggest issues in terms of of Net Zero and environmental sustainability and we need always to be embedding best practice now but also
Thinking about the the the longer term solutions for you know re-engineering the way compute Works to be at lower fundamentally lower energy activity so um really great that you raise that it’s huge and I’m really Keen that the community continues to push us to do a better job every day thanks very much
Chloe did you want to say anything from a a government perspective on this just extremely brief um uh really just to acknowledge that there’s a set of legislative questions actually that sit behind a framework that would help achieve the goal in your your question I won’t lay that out here there’s there’s
Much depth in that um but if I may uh really endorse what what Ros says about the NRP and do a little shout out I think I see Minnie Maul of the design Council here in the middle um Sophie if you and Minnie haven’t spoken yet Minnie
Just ched a a conference earlier this week at the UEA uh with the design Council uh entitled design for Planet uh and I suspect she will have discovered quite a few answers that go right to the heart of your your query great thank you very much um yes
David thank you and uh good morning I’m David McGuire the vice Chancellor at the University of East Anglia I think if there’s one common thread that’s run through um this uh event it’s that research and Innovation is essentially a people business with the uh ideas discoveries inventions are are our
Currency and having spent half of my career 20 more than 20 years running research and development in the private sector um I’m struck by uh the importance and significance of continuity of funding to do World leading uh research and development but also about the importance of of teams
And groups to solve substantive uh real world problems and I can pick up the two case studies today from an and and Andrew that was definitely a theme there the idea that Pap important and consistency funding however the incentives for our system um and we talked a bit about this last night
Didn’t we a is very much on the individual the star pi and the rewards which arise from that so I think if we’re going to make progress and bringing those two things together we need to think about the right incentives to deliver the right sorts of outcomes
And I wonder what the panel might have to say about how we move um in a way that we would wish thank you David So incentives for developing the Next Generation and do you want to say a little bit Yeah I think um in the case of the
Example that I showed I got a two-year translational Grant to recruit for posts and I wanted to recruit the best so they came from all over the world so you have the Visa are issues the time delays that got an extension it was a very ambitious project so they were installed fired up
But of course when you have early career researchers on a two-year contract they’re then looking for their next contract but luckily I had this chance encounter with big farmer who said we want this we want this project to finish so we’ll fund it and that meant that I
Could it wasn’t easy because I had to you know they weren’t going to just give us the money they gave us some money we had to meet milestone the early career researchers were never sure whether they would get extended or not but in the end we did it and for me
That’s been a huge learning experience to to to see what you can do you know this is a molecular biologist a chemist a computational person complimentary skill sets and they were working as a team and also they were reporting to Industry on a monthly basis it was a real training process for them
And I know that people in John inis have said to me that’s amazing that you managed to do that it wasn’t me it was the team but keeping the team together was critical so if I hadn’t had the two and a half Mill two two and a half
Totally but two million for that project through a chance encounter and a huge amount of support from our Tech transfer people because as I’m sure you know when you’re dealing with big farmer or industry half the people in the room the legal people they’re not scientists thanks very much atene I know that
People one of the six um objectives for UK thinking about how you change that culture and the incentives necessary to change that culture can you speak a bit about that absolutely this is um one of my main things in life literally it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a very long time
Because over that period per of time the incentives in my view have become more and more entrenched in the wrong direction and again one of the extraordinary opportunities from the creation of Uki is we have a sufficient range of levers in one place to be able
To pull them synchronously in a way that I hope will move things on so I mentioned for example this shift in the way we think about CVS um uh to be deeply evidenced but more narrative and and welcoming of a much wider range of of um evidence types to demonstrate the
Way people are contributing I um absolutely agree that the way assessment needs to work needs to think more broadly in the context of teams and indeed that um the bbsrc for example have used that narrative CV um in their Institute strategic program Grant renewal with teams not individuals
Represented on that CV so there are a whole variety of different things that we’re doing to shift the landscape um what Anne highlights which is the uh the way funding systems work in bits is a particularly interesting phenomenon because on the one hand if you have an
Awful lot of longer larger projects you essentially lock out new projects so you are absolutely having to balance in the way that I described um between the full range of types of funding that we need so that there is longer larger funding but not in a way that the opportunity costs undermine
Anybody new coming into the system and what we would hope for some of these things is that the institutes that we’re funding particularly in universities I don’t know if people saw but one quarter of the ukri budget that you know 25% 2 billion pounds a year goes straight into English
Universities as um QR um funding following the rep that is a very large sum of money and it is completely unhy ofoc and flexible and so an interesting question is how we move the business models for universities into a greater level of financial sustainability so that they’re better are able to make use
Of that incredibly flexible funding to support uh the longer term employment of a wider variety of people across that research system and then in the context of institutes um there isn’t uh QR funding but nonetheless the the model for most in institutes does involve a block of funding and again we need to
Think about how we ensure that there is enough agility and flexibility for institutes also to to be the the providers of some longer term stability across those um Landscapes so it’s another one of those things that we all need to work together to do to shift the
Culture and to shift how we think about the funding opportunities that we have and marry all of those things together to create the the full range of activities that we need which in some cases will include long-term stability and in other cases absolutely explicitly needs rapid disruption and keeping both of those things
Together is quite a challenge but it’s certainly something I think we can manage as a an innovation Community because that’s that’s our life blood really thanks oeline rapid uh disruption I love that phrase that’s great um more questions uh yes over there um yeah I’m Sarah from the Science and Technology
Facilities Council which is part of Uki um I’m also from Norwich um I was born here and grew up here and I’d like to go back to the theme of people which I think is a really key challenge for Norfolk um a lot of young people feel whether it’s correct or incorrect that
They need to move away from Norfolk for higher education and subsequently for jobs um and if we’re not managing to kind of retain those skills and then attract people back once they’ve graduated you know we’re never going to be able to develop the research um you
Know that we we could have in Norfolk it’s not Norfolk is a lovely place a lot of people want to come back but yeah how come we change that perception among young people thank you thanks very much I think I should turn to someone who has
Been in nor and in the area for quite a while so Andrew okay thank you um I think it’s it’s a challenge there has been an expectation in the past that when you go to university you do leave home I would say that’s changing I know
From talking to our students at UEA we have many more now who are studying from the local area from nor from surrounding towns and commuting in I think that’s one thing I think we have a lot of initiatives at the institution on widening participation to get people to think about University who perhaps
Haven’t done so before and we’re trying to put much more in the place in terms of support for people in terms of opportunities to go to taster days some elements of financial support support for the transition between college and university all of these sorts of things um equally we’re trying very hard to
Ensure that when the students are here and they enjoy their experience we try and make sure that there’s you know opportunities with Employers in the local area for them to stay in Norwich I think if we can get people here we can keep them yeah thanks very
Much Chloe may I add to that um it’s a great question and uh although outrageously I was born in Ashford um uh I uh grew up in uh Norfolk since three uh and went through the entire comprehensive school system here so so I’m going to put myself on on that side
Of of of this debate um but but I think I think that I think as as as we’ve just added to that I think I think there’s there’s sort of two things going on which are almost intention uh and and they both come under the heading of what does social
Mobility consist of does it consist of getting a great education having your horizons expanded and as part of that moving away or experiencing other parts of of the country or indeed the world or does it consist of uh having excellent opportunities right here on your
Doorstep and I think we want both to be true don’t we we we uh we know in Norfolk that we still and this has been a longstanding issue have a job of work to do to bring our education system I think up our school-based education system up to some of the standards that
You see elsewhere in the country and I’m unafraid to say that I think that is true uh and I and I think uh colleagues from all parts of the broader educational system here will probably acknowledge that that’s still to be a problem for us um that said then at the
Higher education uh and and also further education section of our system we have huge opportunities really globally competitive opportunities going on here in Norwich uh and and in norol and indeed in the Eastern e region so we we’ve got to crack at both of these aspects uh I don’t want those two things
To be intention but it it continues to be a a challenge that we’re working on in every part of what we do here in in Norfolk I think the value of today’s conference is in helping us address those those questions the more we do to tell that story and make the sales job
Actually of how excellent we are in Norwich in so many ways the more we can can then uh unite to work on other parts of the system that feed that with uh the the young people of our County in mind at all times and I don’t know if it’s
Been mentioned earlier uh this morning forgive me I wasn’t in the room but you know credit to The Venue that we are in this morning that is also part of that uh ncf and and the uh Community Foundation here uh operating The Nest also have a major uh contribution to
Make to that as do uh as do a few other players who I think are listening uh in this morning thanks Chloe in the round table uh yesterday we did talk quite a bit about skills and the the the skills that have been outlined here and the
Need to ensure that we do train people within the area and give them the opportunity and I mentioned the work that the University of Essex is doing in terms of the funding they’ve got from the leveling up fund for a center for Coastal communities in clacton and overcoming those those that idea that
Universities are out there rather than within the regions such as clacton Rob I’m going to put you on the spot do you want to say a little bit about uh the center for Coastal communities hello is that working yeah so Rob saying University of Essex yeah
So so we’re forming a new center for Coastal communities and that links to our Institute for public health and weal being and uh um we’re working really closely with tendering District Council to set this up so it’s it’s very much at the the early stages at the moment and
The primary purpose of it is to look at resolving some of the social but particularly Health inequalities that exist in the coastal communities around essic so we’re bringing together uh we’re drawing on Research across the institution but also bring together a team focused on this to do this but it’s
Very much a partnership approach and co-creation approach with both the local authorities but also uh the local Health Services to put this together but that that is the focus of the center for Coastal communities but there is a a kind of added benefit for basing in clacton we
Hope so this is in progress at the moment and that’s to raise the visibility of the university in that area so although we although it’s only a few miles away um it it’s probably fair to say that the um the association between say teenagers and the university
Isn’t as strong as it could have could be so actually by having a presence within those Coastal communities we’re hoping to kind of raise the visibility but also kind of lift lift aspirations a bit we’ve been quite successful across essics actually so a lot of our students are from households with average incomes
Uh below £30,000 a lot of them are the first uh first people in their families to go to university so we’re hoping to extend that good work through this and that it while I’ve got the microphone can I ask a question okay go but I think can I use
This to illustrate actually that that it it shows the complexity of some of our local communities and and I just wanted to kind of draw on we’ve heard about some of the great schemes that coming out of UK some of the really interesting place-based schemes and then if you kind
Of look historically if you think about kind of economic growth funding uh some Regional funding to address Social Challenges a lot of it was more on a local level through leps or Regional development agencies uh in the past and perhaps there it might have been easier to achieve the join up with local
Strategy and what can be quite a complex picture on the ground of areas of relative affluence and deprivation sometimes being particularly in the east of England I’d say being very close together and I’m wondering so I kind I’m not sure it’s quite an open question but whether there’s a view on
How that you can achieve that with centralized funding and and kind of understand that complexity and maybe all open on offer is is there a role for universities in helping support funders and ukri in understanding these pictures as very connected entities thanks Robert great question
And I did want to you know leading on from that touch perhaps on Devolution at some point Chloe can I come to you on there um you can but you might need to help me by clarifying your Devolution question then or do you want to go to
Ukri first for the main answer no um it was it was following on from that question about how um local government and central government can work uh with local authorities and uh local universities yes absolutely sorry forgive me for a slow start um I was still thinking about the education
Statistics as I was uh hearing that question um I think there is again great opportunity in this and as you will know the uh uh framework for doing so is is continuing to develop indeed um uh right around now uh Norfolk uh is um haggling over the details essentially of a of a
Devolution deal which will include elements of uh skills um I think does not go as far as the uh if you like sort of more specialist end of research and Innovation but others can correct me if I correct me if I’m wrong on that um but
But I think there’s a huge role to play for those different sections of government to work together it’s something that I think has always been quite wrong in uh Norfolk and again it goes right back to this point about sense of place uh you know it will be
Really observable I hope that actually we We Care passionately about about working together and and seeking to promote that sense of place here in northug um but so I would really characterize this as that as they’re being all to playful actually right now to bring uh local government several
Different levels uh County uh government um uh together with national government together with then institutions such as and agencies uh such as uh ukri and crucially such as the education and and and uh you know uh research institutes themselves that are here in this room to together to perform this job now what’s
The glue in the system that will do all of that there’s actually you know there’s there’s probably a dozen people in this room who uh could and I think should um step up to to do so uh and I think the way is so the way is absolutely
Open thank you very much OTL thank you I’m going to warn Stan who is that I’m going to call him any minute now to talk about um the work that eslc are doing to understand what works well in building local Partnerships which of course and the answer to that question
Will quite likely be different in in in different places so um one of the UK has always two roles one to do the to do the investing in the research and innovation that will support local economic growth but the other is to do the research to understand how you can do that really
Well and of course we’re doing those both of those things together in a in a in an iterative Loop um always as we’ve heard actually you know in the context of of of an’s work for example support will be a patchwork of different funding elements and it will need to to be a
Patchwork precisely because as I described at the beginning our pounds do many different things so we will have schemes that are specifically aimed at leveling up um innovate UK launch pads The Innovation accelerators the strength in places fund very critically about building local Partnerships and delivering what local places need but
Also we have programs on you know building a green future tackling infection whatever it may be some major impact that we will want to be investing in and that will of course involve investing in projects or around the country and we need to do both of those
Things we need to have both of those different types of funding mechanism and so a a huge amount of what needs to happen is a way for local places as Chloe said to understand the the kind of card deck of opportunities in a way that allows them to build the winning hand
For that area um and some parts of the country have done that brilliantly I think in the South Wales semiconductor work for example is a really good example and how we can Surface those examples in a way that other parts of the country can then um benefit from
That uh knowledge of how to do it I think it’s great but that how to do it is also a critical part of the eslc portfolio so I’m getting urgent um requests to to wind up from Chris but Stan if you could just uh comment that super I’ll be super
Quick um it’s becoming my catchphrase but a lot of these things and this is no no exception our social science questions um and this this this this idea of how do we make sure that research and Innovation delivers the benefits for local communities something that esrc is investing a lot in at the
Moment and I hope we’ll invest more in the future one particular project which is relevant because we’ve been talking about it um at UEA yesterday is our local policy Innovation Partnerships um we have one the partnership for East Coast communities focusing very very much on many of the issues that face the
Coastal communities in Norfolk and the local area and um I think what we’re trying to do there is to work to see how the benefits from the kind of work that goes on in the Innovation economy can affect the wider economy and people’s lives um it’s it’s super important and
If we can understand better how to do it then we can make sure that the money that we’re investing through ukri the work that you’re all doing continues to have benefits kind across the country that’s great Stan thank you very much and uh put very succinctly so so I
Appreciate that and it feels like we’ve only just started to scratch the surface in some of these discussions we’ve talked about the importance of skills we’ve talked about the importance of um of of regions uh retaining their skills and their knowledge and the uh regions catalyzing um research which is
Important not just locally not just nationally but globally and Norwich and The Wider east of England can be very proud of uh what it’s doing in this area we’ve talked about the importance of uh long-term funding and flexible and agile funding and I believe that ukri is
Making the Right Moves In this direction and I’d like to thank them for coming out and talking to us and being so open to us in our discussions we are going to even though this this this formal part of the day is coming to a close we’ve got a networking
Lunch now so please do CER any of our panelists but also the other people in the room and talk about some of the questions which have been raised in our panel um another thing that that that that Chris at ukri has asked me to mention is that we’re asking for
Feedback how do you want the feedback Chris Oh cards on everyone’s table so fill in those cards and where do we put them a a box at the back there you go so can I just uh can you join me in thanking the panel um for their [Applause] comments