Last week, we completed our mission on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy to Korea with visits to Prof Hiroaki Kitano and colleagues at The Systems Biology Institute, to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and to Kyowa Hakko Kirin; the latter involved a very interesting and spotless £100M plant producing a variety of biologicals at the 10,000L scale. Most of my other activities last week were internal to BBSRC and I do not rehearse them. [...]

To ensure that BBSRC Science remains at the frontier of international competitiveness, I arrange occasional visits abroad, approximately annually, to check this out on the ground (one such was the Big Data mission to the USA). Given the strategic importance to our portfolio of Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy, and the pre-eminence of these countries in fermentations and industrial biotechnology, last week I led a small mission to look at industrial biotechnology in Korea and Japan. Visits in Seoul included meetings with leaders from the Biologics division of Hanwha Chemical, President Kil-Choo Moon and colleagues from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Drs Jong-Hyun Rhie and Tae Hee Kim of the National Research Foundation of Korea, a variety of colleagues from Seoul National University, and – moving more to the translational end – the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology, the Korean Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Korea Drug Development Fund. It was also interesting to note that Samsung is investing heavily in developing a Well Aging Research Centre as part of its Advanced Institute of Technology. [...]

As previously, this is the season of internal evaluations of the activities and achievements of Swindon Office Directors during the last year (though since the governance changes I provide only advisory comments on Directors of our Institutes enjoying sustainable support), and I carried out a number of these.

We had, after a long gap, another meeting with the Gatsby Foundation and Two Blades, and I had a very helpful 1:1 meeting with Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts. [...]

The first external meeting of the week was to fulfil, with Director of Science Prof Melanie Welham,  an invitation to discuss areas of mutual scientific interest with the Strategy Board of the Medical Research Council. These included bioinformatics and e-science, systems and synthetic biology, nutrition and health, vaccinology and antimicrobials, all areas where our communities have complementary strengths and where we might well seek to develop some joint initiatives. [...]

The week started with the latest meeting of the e-infrastructure leadership Council, co-chaired by Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts, where the main items centred around developing the details of our strategies for e-science. A second and very interesting meeting on infrastructures, organised by the Foundation for Science and Technology, was addressed by Sir John Armitt, Professor Brian Collins, and Tim Yeo MP, each giving some very insightful perspectives on UK large infrastructure needs, how they might better be joined up, and how we need to increase their recognition as a public good that transcends typical parliamentary timescales, and needs a clearer recognition of the extent to which the private sector can provide that.

I appeared with others before the Business, Innovation and Skills Commons Select Committee to discuss Open Access (and note the new RCUK guidelines, also as pdf). These meetings are streamed live, and then made available via the internet; our session starts at about 10-49 into the video that may be viewed here. [...]