Okay. Now we are recording. So first of all, could you just say your name and your various hats?
Yeah. My name is Patrick Grant and the pro vice chancellor for Research Oxford University.
I'm also the Vesuvius Professor of materials in the Department of Material Clearing University.
Thank you. So first. Well, can you just tell me a little about yourself, starting from when you first got interested in scientific research?
Yeah, I, I, I trained at a bachelor level as a materials engineer website and I was at Nottingham University.
And much to my surprise, discovered I enjoyed research and then decided I should follow that and do a Ph.D.
and was offered a place here in Oxford in the materials department and did that.
And I have stayed here ever since and been fortunate to to progress my career through
through through different levels of independent fellowships that a lecturer,
a reader or a professor. And then in 2018, I became pro vice chancellor for research.
And what would you say if you had to define the sort of single question that gets you off to bed in the morning?
What would it be? I think as an engineer, we are interested in understanding how things work and making them work better.
And I think that has been very true of myself I'm particularly drawn to.
Problems in the manufacturing industries about how we can create more sustainable,
better performing products, particularly in the areas of the moment.
I do a lot of work in the area of batteries and try to make a better battery, which I think we all feel we need.
Yes, absolutely. And what are the main scientific approaches that you take to studying that question?
Yeah, I suppose we we often have ideas that we need to test the we we type diagnose a system or a material
or a manufacturing process where we think there are some limitations or things could be done better.
So in order to make things better, we normally need to unpick how they work right now.
And so my methodology often involves is was doing the experiments.
We do some, some simulations which help us check whether our intuitions about the way that the underlying physics is working in a process.
There are often lots of things happening at once and how they interact and what's important.
And then as a material scientist,
I'm interested in how those those the heat and the and the mass flows go to contrive the final structure of the material.
And the structure then controls its performance.
And if we can unpick that, we have a chance of of contriving conditions that make the material better.
Excellent. Well, that actually leads me quite neatly to asking what made you want to step into an academic leadership role?
But it immediately makes me think that, you know, dealing with human engineering in a way that I think there is a part of that that it has.
I have wondered whether that is part of the engineering drive,
which is a desire to sort of or to fiddle to a almost irresistible desire to try and make things function.
That's right. I mean, I don't think there's any nobility in that.
I think it's just just the way engineers tend to tend to tend to fail in the things that they get drawn to.
And. Well, I think, you know, engineering is actually quite a creative process.
It's it's, you know, requires the imagination and it requires people in order to deliver on that imagination.
And so I've always worked in groups and teams and really enjoyed that, that sort of traditional concept of,
of a research group, both when I was junior and then now I'm leading a group myself.
I really enjoy that environment.
And, you know, perhaps taking that away from the laboratory and into the administrative area was was, was a was felt like a natural step for me.
And I've been very fortunate that I've never had to choose. I've always been able to do both.
And even even now I'm pro vice chancellor. I still have a research group of 20 people.
And how do you spend your time with as you might imagine, it's difficult.
I actually in contract, I have a 80% PVC role in a 20% research role.
Probably does work out something like that. But it's not as simple as saying just a day, a week on research, it adds up to 40 hours a week.
Well, it does mean 40 hours a week. Yeah, but they're all problems of my own making and I think I'm just slightly hanging on with my fingernails.
I'm negotiating, doing both jobs at once. So shifting to to COVID specifically, can you remember just at a personal level,
first of all, where you were when you first heard about it or how you first heard about it?
Yeah, I think I almost certainly heard about it first on the on the radio news.
Of course, like everyone else, I had no, no, no sense of where of where it would where it would lead.
But certainly, I think in in the late January and early February, I can't be precise,
but it feels like it was becoming a more common news story, eventually a daily news story.
And then I started to hear things within the university great grapevine as well about people in medical sciences becoming quite interested in.
In what was going on. Mm hmm. And how soon did you realise that actually this was going to have a major impact on the university?
Yes. Well, of course, the first wave hits us a bit later than than elsewhere.
So by the time it really did affect the university, I think we we knew it was going to.
So it didn't it didn't it didn't come as a completely. It was it that was a dawning realisation that there was no way that we were going to miss this.
And what we were seeing in mainland Europe and in China, for me it was a slow,
a slow realisation that it was going to hit us too, and that it would be really thought through what that means.
But it became increasingly clear that a lockdown of of of sorts was going to be needed.
And I think that happened all the way through February.
And then it was really just a matter of time when. When the government would press the button.
Mm hmm. But I see the impact as in your area as falling in in two ways.
That was the predicament of huge numbers of research staff who might be able to go to work.
Yeah, but then on the other hand,
there was the opportunity to actually address the problem from all kinds of angles and put the university's research expertise behind that.
So if we could just take the the first one, first woman to do that and then and go to the other.
So I mean, first of all, the university had to make some kind of collective response, and presumably that was a discussion that you were part of.
I think in in in retrospect, it felt like at the time it felt like a huge burden and it felt like a very,
very uncertain, uncertain time and not really knowing what the future would hold.
And it really was very destabilising feeling that actually in retrospect,
those decisions were easy because they were actually rather clear that, you know, the government said we need to we need to have a lockdown.
We weren't going to do anything other than what the government told us to do.
So in a sense, the actual decision to to effectively shut most of the university was actually quite easy.
I mean, there were some mechanics about how to how to do it in operational terms,
which was all, you know, quite, quite, quite, quite, quite difficult.
And I think in such a big organisation with a high degree of devolved responsibility at times a bit chaotic because people were doing their own thing.
Just to give an example. Well, you know, in the way that the university is configured, figured with its its divisions and then below divisions,
the departments the departments have a very high degree of autonomy under our Constitution, and that serves as well many times.
But, you know, we would find out that departments had already sent their staff home where we were.
As I say, we the the what was emerging then as the university's crisis management team,
we were thinking, shall we send people home as we wait another day, you know?
And then we'd hear, Oh, such and such a department has already sent that people home.
And it was just completely uncharted waters.
And we got we all ended up at the same place, which was more or less the shut down of the whole university.
But actually doing that in an orderly way was, it was quite a challenge for us.
Yeah, but I think, I think we got there and I think when it was we'll get on to later when it comes,
when it came to reopening and it's not so black and white that they were much harder decisions because you
now have degree and you're now trying to agree sort of the extent of how far you go in any direction.
And, you know, the stakes feel quite high with people's health and at stake.
What was also quite helpful, I think there was that the guidance that we got from the government made it very clear that
the what we call the lockdown in in teaching and research did not apply to COVID research.
And of course, that, again, sort of seems quite obvious, but was totally critical for us because,
you know, we had people who were doing really important work.
But it also, funnily enough, provided, I think in some ways both an allowance and an incentive to allow people who were not working in that area,
didn't see themselves as working in medical sciences, working on medical problems,
would turn their hand to that research and then therefore qualify under that guidance to keep going.
And so I think for some people, that was a bit of an incentive, you know, so we had people,
you know, building their ventilators and of course, that was encouraged to continue.
And so although we we had the very obvious groups in infectious diseases work and vaccines,
you know, work working away harder than ever, redoubling and then redoubling again their efforts.
We also had a whole constituency of of researchers who'd never worked in that area being being at work, whereas everyone else wasn't.
So you mentioned a crisis management team. You were part of that? Yes, yes.
Yes. And how often did you meet? Oh, sometimes we were meeting formally, I'd say, and may in the moment,
the time when we were meeting three days a week and there was lots of informal sort of discussions going on pretty much all the time.
And yes, then there was quite an extended period where we were meeting twice a week and then it's it has gone back down to once a week.
And there was a period when it was probably once every three weeks, but didn't last as long as we hoped.
And at the moment we were back to every two weeks.
But things absolutely basic things like people getting paid. Hmm.
Was that all taken care of under the government furlough scheme?
And did you? Yes.
So. Well, of course there was.
There wasn't.
You know, there was a strong feeling that how can how can the sort of the finances of the university continuing quite in quite the same way.
And we did set aside fairly early on some money from our reserves as a as a contingency.
Our major concern was that because the lockdown was sort of running through March, April, May,
we pretty much wrote off much sort of additional economic activity, if you like, during that academic year.
But what was really worrying was what will the next academic year hold the one that was due to start in October?
And so we made you know, I think we did three scenarios, you know,
that we were still shut and that we were open to some extent, although we were fully, fully open and now we were.
And that's why we needed the we created the contingency because it was looking extremely bleak,
particularly in terms of overseas students being able to come here,
either whether they could come legally or whether they just didn't feel like they wanted to come would have a big impact.
But also during that process, because we did make that contingency available,
we made a commitment that we wouldn't make people redundant because of COVID explicitly because of the the pandemic, at least for a four, four.
I can't quite remember. I think for, you know, a pretty extended period.
We said, you know, we we took some remedial actions.
You know, we had a recruitment freeze and other other expenditure freezes,
promotions and discretionary pay was were all frozen, which, of course, people were were unhappy.
Well, no one can be happy with it.
But I think they understood job security was worth a lot when everyone was feeling so destabilised, because we've never been through this before.
So to have a, you know, a pretty good guarantee that your job is is going to be safe unless things really went to some another step,
a step worse was, I think, you know, we were very fortunate as an institution to have the financial strength to be able to do that.
So everybody did get paid and we did make some very limited use of of furlough.
The colleges was not really my area, but the colleges made use of furlough.
There was some posts in the university, but mainly we we kept on paying our core staff as we would normally.
And then our research staff, which what I'm particularly focussed on is a lot of them are actually paid for from it, from external grants.
And I have to say that our funders really stood behind us and I think behind the sector and,
and didn't start cancelling contracts, didn't say if that research were sitting at home, we're not going to pay them anymore.
I think we had a fantastic response, people, because they were going through it themselves and they would,
you know, they would want someone to do it to them. And so, you know,
maybe there were a few examples where for for no fault of their own and companies got
in really real difficulty and couldn't settle their quarterly invoices for a while.
But I have to say, by and large, our external funders really stood stood behind their commitments.
And did they get any refunds from the government? A question about the sort of well, the government did make some more money for for for for you know,
many of our researchers are funded essentially by the government. And the government did make extra money available to prolong.
People's contracts to compensate them for the time they lost in their research.
But more importantly, they didn't stop paying. So they allowed people to to be at home and to be working from home, which is another story, of course.
And our biggest other funder is the Wellcome Trust.
They stood totally behind their commitments, too.
There were a few smaller well, not that small, but smaller.
The Wellcome Trust charities who rely on, you know, fund runs, high street shops, that's where all that money comes from.
Those were all closed. Those are all stopped. So they just couldn't carry on with the same level of commitments.
Like Cancer Research UK. Exactly. And you know, you can't do anything but completely understand that they're doing what they have to do.
But I have to say, I don't know I don't know what it was like across the sector here,
through through through the generosity, through people being understanding.
And we we pretty much managed to keep everybody more or less on the post that they were contracted to.
Yeah, I think we did a good job of making. So just from a little bit of reading of the online,
I get the impression that some of these the particularly the research staff did have a number of problems.
I mean, things like even if they could work, they might be having to homeschool their kids.
Yes. Yes. So what kind of systems did you set up to to support them through all that?
Well, I'm sure I think I would probably say not enough.
And and probably that that that that's true.
So, yes, people that people were were asked to stay away or they had to stay away in the first in the first lockdown.
And I think initially, you know, most people, even if they were experimentalists, had enough.
To do looking at data, you know, researchers typically always have research papers which are half written, written or research grant proposals.
And there was, of course, the shift to online meetings through various well-known packages now that we all got used to have all got used to using.
And I think, you know, for three or four months it was okay.
People probably had enough to do that.
There was perhaps a certain amount of inventing new things to do or or changing your research from being entirely practical to do,
you know, more theory, more analysis, more reading. Finish off that literature review you said you're going to do.
But I think by the time we got to sort of four or five months, people were sort of running out of genuine tasks to do working from home.
And because I think the lockdown was, you know, beginning to get a little bit relaxed then, which came just about at the right time.
Meanwhile, of course, those people working on COVID were working harder than ever, but everybody else was having to find substitute tasks to do.
And then the lab started to open and the libraries and the other research facilities and people could come back.
But it was a highly regulated environment that they were coming back to know social distancing,
very, very strictly enforced the capacity of buildings way, way down.
But you did a survey in about July. Was it of what we started with?
We did do it. We did do a survey. And the homeschooling impact was clearly one of the biggest impacts which I can 100% relate to.
Um, and, um, we, we did make some a little, a little bit later, we did make some funds available for people to help rebuild their research.
And so, yeah, I would which, you know, we couldn't do it for absolutely everybody, but we did it for the, for the most obvious cases.
Um, and, uh, you know, there was informally, you know, there was a lot of people, you know, coming,
coming in and grabbing their computers and taking them home in their cars and, you know, their chairs.
And, you know, it wasn't like we suddenly made a whole load of laptops available for everybody and
property as it was all it was all quite ad hoc and personally in the beginning,
it was just it was sort of slightly exciting, you know, you know, it was so novel.
But the novelty very quickly wore off.
And, you know, I think people did find it very, very difficult juggling poor I.T. performance, trying to look after their kids,
trying to look after themselves, you know,
trying to take advantage of the limited opportunities there were to go out and take exercise and things like that.
It was, it was it was it was it was tough for people.
Um, and we couldn't just suddenly find everything that everybody was asking for.
But I think we did prioritise, particularly at the department level rather than from the centre departments,
did very practical things on the basis of need to to help the most affected people.
Mm hmm. But one of the things that seems to emerge from that is a need to have some kind of two way channel of communication
with the research staff that possibly hadn't existed in a way that might have been helpful even previously.
Well, I think there's always a.
Yeah. I mean, I think people are very, very, very, very different in how they approach what they want from their research and how research is managed.
So you get, you know, very big research groups which are very sociable and sort of have a sort of a sort of a subculture of their own.
And then, of course, you have to learn Scola, who is quite used to working on their own and everything in between.
The thing that really concerned me was we have people arriving from overseas to take their research jobs here who, you know,
would turn up and pretty much go instantaneously into working from home for quarantine and then working from home.
And you're trying to then sort of induction into those cultures to make them feel welcome,
to show them how the university works and to get them going on their research.
And that was really, really hard, I felt. And some of those people had families too.
And a again going into quarantine and and lockdown and yeah, the way people were were well supervised.
I mean, personally, uh, it made me sort of formalise supervision a bit more than perhaps I might have done in the past.
So because I couldn't actually meet anybody. This is in your own research?
In my own research group, you know, you have to sort of diary everything into into your online meeting.
Whereas in normal times, I would kind of go into the lab and say who who needs to have a work and who needs to have a word with me?
You know, I'll see you at your lab and I'll see you at 12, whatever. Because you don't you couldn't do that.
You actually had to formalise and actually made me able to track who I was seeing and who I wasn't seeing and better than by normal times,
which I would sort of just keep in my head. But I do think that overall,
researchers reported more a greater sense of isolation and a missing of that buzz that even actually even as alone research,
you still can get going into the library and being and you know, it's a nice environment in Oxford,
but if you're if you're just in your in your bedsit,
you're just really missing that that buzz and that that sort of being part of this
great research enterprise feeling that you get just being in and around the university.
And I think that is one of the things that we're still trying to rebuild,
to get right back to the pre-pandemic levels that that fearsome buzz of of what it is to be doing research here.
So what was the role of the research staff hub that he set?
Well, there is I mean, this is, again, a slight a slight benefit of of of the pandemic in that.
I wanted while I was required, but also wanted to find ways the universities could do more for our particularly for our fish.
Fixed term contract research community.
So these are people on the external research grants who are paid to undertake relatively
specified bits of work normally under the under the supervision of a senior academic.
And we have over 5000 people on fixed term contracts so that our biggest staff group has this churn all the time.
And they're the real engine house of the university's research excellence.
But I think we all recognise that we could do more to make these people feel welcome and to offer them more,
more diverse opportunities in the university.
Because unlike undergraduates or postgraduates, they're not part of a college.
They tend to be much more department based.
And we don't we haven't in the past really sort of looked after them from a careers point of view in the same way that we do our undergraduates.
So I just sort of thought, we need to hear from them. We need to work out what is what we can reasonably expect to to do better for that community.
I think one of the first things we did was was to make sure that that community had a proper representational
structure so people's voices could be heard and to be able to divert or direct those voices into the right forum.
So getting one thing quite early on we were able to do was to get representatives of the
research community on to university council and all the major committees of the university.
So that was something quite easy to do to begin with.
But then we realised that there were some other things that we could do centrally to
complement what departments were doing locally with their subjects specific expertise.
But there were some things that needed to be done at the centre, not least to ensure some commonality of approach.
And that's really how the hub came about. I wanted to create a small team of people who would work with departments and divisions to
coordinate what we were doing for fixed term contract research in a more coordinated way.
And also, we signed a national concordat for what's called a research of staff development,
which again really commits the university to investing a bit more into its research staff by making sure they have time to pursue their own projects,
making sure we take career development seriously, that we look at the research culture in it,
whole research cultures that are in are in the university to try and make sure that this is a great place to do research.
And ultimately, I like, you know, people in that position in that career to say,
I want to go and work at Oxford because I hear they really look after that people.
You know, I don't think where we're there yet, but the hub is part of that and part of that journey.
And having appointing some people into a role where they're exclusively there to help.
Fixed term contracts, researchers with their careers, I think, sends a great a great signal that we're serious.
We're actually putting some money into it more and more, I hope.
And you. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how far we can go. But I'm quite ambitious for that.
But that's a very big piece of work we've done during the pandemic.
So did it would it have happened without London? I think I think we had enough momentum and enough willpower.
And I think the zeitgeist was in the university that everybody could see.
You know, that to be a good modern employer, we need we need to invest a bit more in this area.
I mean, one of the things that slowed it down is we have a physical building for the hub.
And we couldn't we couldn't get into that building to finish its its development.
On the other hand, it meant that we did everything online, including the launch.
And actually online is quite a good way to to promoting inclusion.
We've learnt that in fact we have had some events since where people said you should have done this on Nottingham,
you would have got more people along, it would have been more inclusive.
And now we're a small town, but nonetheless it takes a long time to move around.
So if you want to involve people from medical sciences up on the Headington campus in a lunchtime hub event,
that's a two hour commitment in-person, but it can be 45 minutes or an hour online.
So I think it allowed us to to to get more more voices and more people involved in building up the hub idea, working out what it was going to work.
Com first and to get it launched. Brilliant.
Okay, so let's move on to Copart itself.
So a lot of I mean, I've talked quite a lot of them already,
but obviously a lot of people decided very early on that they were going to pivot, pivot their research to to focus on COVID.
And so what was there anything you needed to do to facilitate that that switch?
Oh, I wish I could say I I'd had a hand on the tiller.
But, you know, great researchers think that they don't need to be told what to do.
I think best I played at a central university, played a facilitating role.
And I think I think we did I think we did do that. But no, it was just it was just inspiring.
I mean, I felt guilty. I wasn't doing more with my own material science research saying the way how imaginative some some people were.
I mean, the thing that I think gave me a great sense of satisfaction was great for the university,
was the way that our donors also spontaneously would ring up and say, how can we help you?
And this was even in the very early days of of us working on vaccines when it wasn't clear at all that we were going to you know,
we were going to have anything to take to take out outside from the university.
Even before then, people really wanted to to help.
And so I set up a committee to look at how we could disperse these these donor funds,
because donors would say, you know, I don't want all the wining and dining.
I just want to give you some money now. And I feel very confident that you'll spend it wisely on something that's going
to going to stop this pandemic or make a difference as soon as possible.
And that's a real challenge for us. You know, we work on 3 to 5 year funding cycles.
We write grant proposals. We have them assessed. We get a letter telling us we're going to get the money in six months later, we start the work.
You know, we had donors who say, you know, we want to help right now.
And of course, we got people who wanted to do something right now.
But in terms of the systems we operate, they're not you know, they're not systems designed to be that agile.
So as I was saying, one of the things we did do is that with fantastic support from from the administration who are handling all of this,
pulled together a group of people when we created a really short form two people to fill in,
it said, if you've got an idea that can make a difference in the short term to the progress of the pandemic,
we want to hear from you and tell us what you need. And we would have these marathon meetings that would last sort of five,
four or 5 hours where we would get all these ideas the night before, would read them through, and then we would debate them the next day.
And at the end of that day, we would disperse the money. And sometimes we were spending five or £6 million per meeting.
So this was this was the COVID 19 Research Response Fund.
Yes. Because that was a was there an earlier thing called the Strategic Research Fund that.
Oh, I'll come to that. I'll come to that in a sec. Yeah. Yeah. So so this was this was the COVID Refuge Research Fund.
And, you know, people were very people, very collegiate.
You know, these were fast decisions. So, you know, they're probably only 80% right.
But they were really focussed on getting resources into people's hands who had ideas so they wouldn't be tied up chasing money.
And they could they could do something. And there were other mechanisms that would fund them in the medium and the longer term.
But and that was that was a tremendously good experience.
And I think everybody felt good to part because you felt you were doing something instead of just responding, you were actually doing something.
So that was great. The Strategic Research Fund was a little bit earlier, just a little bit earlier in the story, which is that.
I think the team, the vaccine team in the Jenna felt pretty confident pretty quickly that they were going to have a vaccine
that would make it through animal trials and should go into its human safety and efficacy trials.
I think there's quite a lot of confidence that they would get at least that far, but that requirement would require a certain amount of vaccine.
The one that they had developed and I'm interested in understanding more about
would need a certain amount of vaccine to go to be available for trials.
And beyond what we could make within the university, we have where we have a small manufacturing facility which was really critical in the very,
very early days, and they needed something like £1,000,000 to place a contract,
I think in in Italy for four for manufacture, not knowing that it was ever going to work, but if it worked,
then it would be available and their existing grants didn't have that capability to do that.
They were applying for money but hadn't heard back.
And so we we had a discussion to say, you know, there's £1,000,000 needed and everybody around the table said, let's just let's just do it.
I think the detail of it is that there is a a fund which I chaired called the
Strategic Research Fund where if that million pounds had ever actually been needed,
that's where it would have come from. But then, of course, in the end, it was not it was not needed because by then other grants had come through.
But being able to underwrite that level of of cost of that liability at that point
to stop people worrying about it so they could worry about more important things,
again, was was something really, really good that the university could do.
You know, we're fortunate that we had that we had those resources.
And I'd only just set this strategic research fund up actually a few months before then.
I'm sure we would have found a way if we hadn't have the Strategic Research Fund.
I don't think it was that critical, but it was very nice for me.
Having argued that we need to be able to invest strategically in our research, that one of the very first things we did was underpin the vaccine.
Um, should it have been needed? Mm hmm. So what?
Can you give me some idea of the range, some of the range of things that you found it to be?
Rapid response? Yes. I'll try to remember sort of the diversity.
I mean, I remember we we we, we funded a, uh, a programme that looked at the psychological effects on intensive care units,
doctors and nurses, which turned out to be really, really important.
Of course, lots of studies still going on, I believe, still going still going on in that area.
And it just.
It shows that even very, very early on in the pandemic, there was an awareness that, you know, this is very traumatic for the medical staff involved.
So even though we were we were in that first peak of hospitalisations,
it was clear that that would be very valuable to have some some work of that type.
Of course, we funded over the real hardcore vaccine stuff that you might you might imagine, but we also funded some sort of alternative therapies.
So not not just vaccines, but antibody treatments and things like that.
We did quite a lot of funding of diagnostics. So, you know, things that look quite like lateral flow tests.
And in fact, you know, some of the things that we we funded have gone on to have quite strong commercial possibilities of of their own.
And of course, we we also help fund some therapies as well.
There were lots of ideas about what might or might not might be a useful therapy.
So, no, it was it was it was very empowering to actually be able to fill out what was doing something.
And it's also due to the generosity of our funders who who who would who would literally take the reassurance of a phone call to say,
we will, we'll we'll spend that money. We'll spend this on something that's really focussed on the problem.
So they came to you initially, did you? They put out a call.
No. You never thought that? I would say I would put out a call.
I mean, we talk to funders all the time, and at that time there was only one topic of conversation.
So but I did. We did. We didn't ever sort of have to have a separate, targeted campaign.
We meant many of the people who gave us money were people who had already given us money and began to hear what we were doing with the vaccine,
but also with the the therapeutics, the recovery trial and some of the other,
you know, contributions we were making to see to ventilators, to track and trace.
I think we had quite a. High profile in the news.
Our press office was was was busier than it has ever been.
And the vaccine drove a lot of that. But it wasn't just the vaccine.
We were doing a lot of advising as well in lots of different spheres in government and beyond around the world.
So a profile was really high and that definitely helped donors pick up the phone to us and say, How can we help?
Hmm. So to what extent, if any extent, did you communicate with administrators at other universities?
Yes. So meet me personally a bit.
I mean, there is there is a regular meeting of other pro vice chancellors for research amongst the research intensive universities.
And within that then you always sort of tend to have people that you've known for a while who as well as the formal meetings you might be,
you just pick up the phone to and say, What are you doing about return to onsite working properly?
Probably the most I did that was with Cambridge.
And just because. You know, it's another collegiate university.
It's another university with a disaggregated, devolved responsibility structure.
So it's just easier to compare notes with with that type of organisation.
And yeah, we had, I actually think, you know, Cambridge were very,
very generous and helpful with some of the things they that they shared with me, which definitely helped us make wise decisions I think.
Let's just pick up returned to one side because you mentioned that earlier and I didn't follow up at the time.
Did that present a new set of problems? Yeah. Yes, I think that was that was amongst the most the most difficult because.
Well, you have I mean, you would have it literally in a day, you know, have a communication from someone saying, what are you doing?
You know, you're destroying my career.
I need to get into my lab and do my do my work.
You know, I can go to a football match or I can go to a restaurant, a cinema, but you won't let me back in my own building.
What on earth are you doing? And then the next email will be from someone saying, What on earth is the university doing opening up its buildings?
You know, there's a public health crisis going on. Just look at the hospitals, look at the local hospital.
You're just going to create more cases. And, you know, just trying as a group, I think all of the big decisions were made as a group,
but just trying to sort of navigate what is the right level of of opening up.
How should we would you know, how strong should the encouragement be and how mandated should it be?
How much latitude should we give individual departments to apply the rules?
And yeah, it was all completely unknown.
I mean, most of us were not were not medicks, although we had fantastic regular advice from our own medicks as well as, as well as government advice.
But just getting yeah.
The, the degree and the tone right week by week was what was was challenging and it and it's relaxed and it's good but it goes up and down.
You know, you take, you know, you take your lead from the government, but you have to interpret that for for the university.
And you have got, you know, these different communities.
You've got the undergraduate community based in it, in colleges and not in the central university,
but often accessing central facilities who operate on these short, intense bursts of study in the terms.
And you've got the graduate community which are here for more of the time,
and then the the fixed term contract researchers and all the administrative staff in the way that the the the government's intention.
What the government said you could do was slightly different.
You know, you had Department for Education giving some type of advice that was apparently consistent with the broader advice,
but actually often didn't seem to be didn't come out on the same day and often very different times.
So it just sort of tried to do the right thing, support the staff, do something which is credible.
But the last thing you want to do is to do something that you feel is contributing to people becoming ill.
On the other hand, closing the university is not helping anybody's research career or other career.
And a lot of people, you know, need to get out from where they're stuck and want to come back to work.
And, you know, you need to facilitate that. So just finding the finding the middle way, I think in the end, know, we did we didn't do a bad job.
We didn't do that differently to other universities, I think, you know, but smart people often come to the same same answer.
But it did feel difficult and it felt loaded, particularly in the early days.
And so we got we got more used to it. And do you think things have settled out at a kind of new equilibrium where working
from home is accepted as something that people might do from time to time or has it?
Is the the goal still to go back to exactly how we were?
No, I think it's neither. I think the goal is not to go back to how how it was.
I think we have to recognise that we've learnt that digital working for some people for some of the time is absolutely fine.
It's, it's a more civilised way of doing things, it's more efficient of that time,
it's better off that work life balance and it's more productive for the university.
So we definitely don't want to go back to to where we were.
And personally, I don't think we should go back to where we were. But neither do I think we've got the new equilibrium.
I think there is a new equilibrium to be had, but we're not at it.
So I think we're still working through the ramifications of what everybody.
Many, many people, rather, have been working for. And what that means for the university, I don't think has quite has quite landed it.
It may well be very difficult, very different for those different communities.
Undergraduates, graduates, support staff, academic staff.
Researchers. I think if you are an experimentalist.
Probably the new equilibrium looks very much like the old equilibrium.
If you're working in administrative support,
you may find that actually the best thing for you and for your productivity and for the university is to work at home two days a week.
And I think like every other major employer, we're on that journey to working out how to how to work out who fits into which category,
what's best for them, what's best for the university, and what the implications are.
A simple people I've spoken to have said what a revelation it's been that what they've been doing has been very has been much more collaborative.
And obviously people collaborate in their groups, but there's been tremendous collaboration across groups and teams,
not just in the medical sciences, but in, for example, in social sciences.
And some people have just said how wonderful they found that in contrast to the usual kind of academic cut and thrust.
Is that something that you've been aware of as well? Yes.
I mean, I have to say, I'm really, really pleased to hear that, because one thing that I do think has been missed,
it a little bit like the buzz in the phase I said of the research environment is that is those are those in the corridor,
in the street, in the canteen meetings where you get talking to people or you bump into somebody.
And it spurs a thought in that sort of serendipitous way that research works in the way particularly
people earlier in their careers build their research networks by chatting to people and trying things.
And it has worried me that that building of networks and the exploitation of
networks has been really quite badly impaired by working working from home.
The digital environment is doesn't so readily offer those kind of happenstance events.
So it's good it's it's it's good to hear that from you said that some other some people have nonetheless managed to find new connexions, new networks.
And you think it's about making something that's thought to be for the public good rather than just to advance your own career.
So not just, again, not just the vaccine, but things like some of these big data systems that people have set up in the planning school,
for example, and the things I've done there, the whole world in data and all that kind of thing, which are there for the world to use.
That's such a great example. Yeah, yeah.
No, I think, I think, I think that that's a really good example and accelerated probably our understanding of,
of, of how digital tools can help what we might call open research or open science,
which is not just, you know, publishing your papers, your learnt research papers,
but actually getting people involved in research, showing them as it goes along, being part of the research.
Yeah, I think, I think because we've been stuck at home a bit more, probably getting to grips with those digital tools has been hastened and.
So I'm coming. But my last few questions are much more about your personal reaction to the pandemic.
So to what extent did you did you ever feel personally threatened by the possibility of catching it?
I don't think especially I don't think especially because I think yeah, it's very,
very fortunate that I could I could hunker down in my home with my family and function in most of my most of my job.
Obviously, my research was hit like everyone else's in in a way that actually felt quite safe.
You know, I wasn't compelled by my job to to be the first person back on public transport or, you know, on on the crowded tube in London.
I can walk to work or take I'll take the bike and, you know, have a nice environment at work.
I'm fortunate I'm a large amount of of space.
So I, I didn't I didn't feel in practical terms, I mean, existentially.
You do you do feel it when you turn on the news and you see these terrible statistics and you sort of think,
well, you know, there's no reason why I shouldn't get it compared to anybody else.
But I think I was able to contrive a fairly safe personal environment locally.
And what about your working hours?
I mean, you've obviously you're obviously you said at the beginning that because you've got these two clocks, you're very busy anyway.
Did you work much longer hours than normal? Um, I mean, you know, obviously the, the job I hold,
there's a lot to do and I choose to work long hours in order to sort of feel like I'm on top of it.
I'm on top of the job. I think they got to at times they've got a bit longer.
But I was also in, you know, in the main parts of the pandemic at home, like everyone else with three children and my partner.
And that creates a certain sort of tempo and heartbeat in the house.
Were you I don't think it's really easy or right to sort of shut away and do 10 hours.
You know, we're all we're all in it's in it together.
So now I worked, you know, as hard as I normally worked, I think I'd and maybe on occasion a little bit a little bit harder.
But I have plenty of distractions, which is a good thing. I'm sort of assuming that you haven't been involved in teaching since you started, didn't I?
I haven't, no. Not not. Not tutorials or lecturing.
Yeah. So we don't need to look at teaching. Um. Uh.
Were you involved in the COVID safety regime either for this building or for your lab?
Yes. Yes, I was. Yes. So I mean, I was part of the the sort of distributed group that developed the return to onsite working protocols, you know,
social distancing, ventilation, one way circulation, checking the the buildings when we brought them back to life.
Didn't didn't have legionella in the water systems and you know,
so I was involved certainly not not the lead in the detail, but certainly involved in all of that.
And then was on the receiving end of my own advice because then as a group as a group leader with research laboratories,
we then had to put those in place.
So yeah, you know, putting the, the, the yellow stickies down on the, on,
on the corridor floor and thinking about how many people can go in each room at a time and what's the
safe number of people to have in the building and how to get people to and from the workplace safely.
Yeah. So what do you think? I worked well in general. Yes, I do.
Yes, I do. And I think I think in general, across the university, it worked well.
I mean, I don't know whether it's still true, but we I think for at least the first 18 months,
we really did think that we we couldn't find any evidence of workplace transmission of COVID.
So that was covered in the university. It was happening in social settings within our our buildings.
There was no transmission. In fact, you know, people have some some people have said we were too conservative.
We could have actually been a little bit more ambitious for how many people we had.
But, you know, I think it's a great, great a great record.
I do, I think more or less answered this earlier.
But did you feel that because you had a job to do that was directly related to making things better for people?
Did that support your own wellbeing? Um, that's an interesting question.
I think phrased it very well. I thought it best because I'm asking everybody this question.
Yeah. I mean, I think I, I think my well being was, was okay during, um, through, through both,
you know, professional and privately and, you know, just very, very fortunate because, you know,
my family wasn't struck struck down in any tragic way, knew lots of people with it, of course,
who caught it and, you know, had had a had a reasonable environment for us all to be locked down together.
In fact, my children were an age where nobody that they would have left home.
So I, my wife and I feel we had, you know, an extra 18 months with them before they've now gone off to get on with the next part of their lives.
And uh, yeah, I think from a well-being point of view, did I k not, you know, better than better, that's for sure.
And do you think? Oh, no, I think that one.
So would you say that the experience of the pandemic has changed your thinking about your area of responsibility?
Has it given you ideas about how to manage research across the institution that might apply equally well in both the pandemic time?
The the big learning, I think, has been how fast we can do things when we really have to do.
The university reputation is for moving a bit slower. It is.
And I think I think sometimes we actually believe that a little bit too much because it's such a comfortable cliché.
You look at all the old buildings and the tradition and it's easy to sort of then
fall into the trap so that we don't move with the times and things happen slowly.
And of course there are examples of that. But, you know, we've we've done a lot in the last few years, even before the pandemic.
And, you know, sometimes I wish we instead of having just postcards of all the old buildings we had postcards of all the
fantastic labs and all the great inventions and companies and things that we actually have done here,
too. So but the pandemic has shown us we really can be agile and we can do things fast.
And, you know, my job was not really I don't think, to invent those things, but just to just to challenge myself about how fast we could do things.
Um, so what I'd like to capture for the future is that sense of we really can do things quickly.
It's exciting to do things quickly. People can be, can spontaneously change research fields and throw themselves into something.
And we need to find out how we can support them doing that.
I mean, the most obvious thing is, you know, there is a climate crisis.
Could we I know many people are already,
but could we go even further and really pivoting our research with the sort of urgency that we did around the vaccine into the climate crisis?
You know, I need to think how how essentially university can can could do that, I guess not overthink it, otherwise it'll be too slow.
But yeah just try to that the sense that universities can make a real difference.
You know, look at the vaccine.
We've all felt proud in being part of parts of it, even if we've had nothing to do with it personally, just to be part of the same institution,
you know, how can we capitalise on that great that great feeling to really inspire people to do even, even more in their research?
So that's what I'm I hope that is a permanent change that I've I've expressed and I hope,
you know, I can get as many other people to feel the same way.
Just let me. Thank you very much.