The first external visit of the week was to Unilever’s research laboratory at Port Sunlight. As a company with interests in food, health and healthcare, and with a published intention to move towards full sustainability of its value chain by 2020, it was not surprising to see that their strategic interests map closely onto our own.

We had a useful meeting on the Norwich Research Park with the Directors and Directors of operations of our strategically funded Institutes, including updates on campus developments, plans for sharing facilities and much else.

We also had one of our regular meetings with the Technology Strategy Board. Although there is very frequent and considerable coworking at every level, these meetings, as for those with the Institutes, serve as effective fora to exchange thoughts and knowledge of our activities and strategies. [...]

My first external visit of the week was to York, where I had discussions with the National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC) and the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products. These have both been well ahead of the curve in recognising the need to integrate the plant-based fixation of carbon and its conversion, extraction and processing into high(er) value products besides foodstuffs and feed. Many issues remain in terms of rolling out the Knowledge Based BioEconomy on a large scale, but it is necessary to have things to roll out in the first place!

We had a very useful meeting of the Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum, including Minister for Business and Enterprise Mark Prisk. The number of examples of a move to sustainable, biologically based chemicals production is growing apace. Readers may be interested in the Forum’s autumn newsletter, as well as a paper by NESTA on Financing Industrial Biotechnology in the UK. It would seem that Finance for Industrial Biotechnology is something that is mainly likely to come not from the Venture Capital sector but more from large corporates within the relevant sectors. [...]

Last week saw another (and the final) ‘double-header’ of Institute Assessment Panels, the first being that of the Babraham Institute and the second of The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC). Both panels were as usual redolent with real experts, with whom it was also a pleasure to enjoy informal discussions. This coming week completes the Institute Assessment Panels with one visiting the Institute for Animal Health. As with all the others, funding decisions will not be taken until Council meets next March, and this blog does not really comment on such visits. However, I was interested to have my first sight at TGAC of one of the new ‘PacBio’ single-molecule genome sequencing machines. [...]

The first engagement of last week involved chairing a session involving introducing the ELIXIR project and overseeing the election of a Chair (Søren Bruak) and vice-Chair (BBSRC’s Alf Game) for the ELIXIR Interim Board, with the voting participants involving the nine countries that have thus far signed up formally. Scientific and funding representatives of a good many other countries also attended both the election and the meeting following, and it was gratifying to note the consonance of purpose (‘a collaboration of the willing’) in the governance and rollout of everyone involved in this major piece of e-infrastructure development.

I then attended our next Institute Assessment Panel, this time at The Roslin Institute. As with the other Panels, whose form it followed, it was a very packed but worthwhile agenda, and a useful opportunity to discuss all of the projects and activities en masse. Again, with another three visits before Christmas, it will not be until the New Year that BBSRC Council determines the final founding outcomes. [...]

A very full week last week (ok, they are all ‘full’) started with the visit of Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts to a topping out ‘milestones’ ceremony celebrating partial completion of the ‘Development Phase 1’ building at the Institute for Animal Health at Pirbright. This is a major project for us, with this part alone costing rather north of £100M. It will allow a major expansion of our abilities to carry out research in this space, and will surely prove a magnet to other talented researchers. For reasons of biosecurity, the building itself includes many technical innovations, as well as high specifications even for more conventional materials like the concrete of which it is constructed. This kind of infrastructure is paralleled by e-infrastructure, another important part of scientific infrastructure for the development of which I attended another meeting. [...]