Well, welcome back, everybody.
So if I think I'm going to sound a little bit like Phil from yesterday, it was a rich and lively debate and discussion in our group,
and I wish I'd been able to sort of whiz around all of the other groups.
And it's my pleasure to sort of now introduce a series of people who will feedback from each of the groups and first of all,
many known to many of you. And certainly for those who came to Oxford two years ago, Alison was in many of the sessions.
Alison Campbell to feedback from her group. Thanks, Joe.
Well, we, of course, had a really good conversation and and it was quite wide ranging, but we did try to keep to the topic as much as we can.
So we actually we were talking, of course,
about the importance of international collaboration and looking through that lens of UK and US collaboration.
We we moved on to a broader discussion not provoked by mail.
Have you know about collaborations, transnational collaborations, not just UK, US and the importance of those?
And we felt that the the next UK alri relationship, in my view, was really fantastic and we'd welcome seeing that kind of thing happening more often.
But we did also recognise that the challenges set around the purpose of creating such relationships,
what you needed to get out of it and the importance really of having it, having a particular focus and a challenge based focus.
And we talked about how you might we might think about approaching that and thought that, you know, global challenges were absolutely terrific.
But the inherent issue with the global challenges that it was global. So everybody was facing the same challenge.
And so so there were two things that came out of that one.
We thought that you potentially needed to start thinking about the layers below
that and how you might get together and actually forge meaningful relationships.
And I guess really thinking about formalising those kinds of relationships,
maybe at specific technology type level that then brought us on to talking about the fact that you you
needed to have some very active coordination to make that possible and to make that that meaningful.
And that actually could be something that's built back from needs rather so very much a pull rather than necessarily a push and a
coordination where the sum of the parts were greater than individual and also the some of the parts didn't mean and duplication.
So we felt that your key was that that applied around that clustering direction and there was support.
But then we said, Well, who would do that? He would really try and bring that together,
but a great example of European bioimaging and how that should really come together and
that that really is about bringing diverse and different skills and expertise together.
But but a reflection that actually these things can take a long time and that
in itself took took 12 years to to get motoring it really properly embedded.
And so we need to we need to think about that. And I think one of one of the issues that came out was that,
but I accelerated and then we moved on to some of the challenges that sat around transnational collaboration.
And of course, security came up as a big risk.
And then we also discussed the the the worry and the concern about security as being
a potential inhibitor of relationships and pushing forward research and innovation.
And that said, it's very clear that the importance of building more due diligence into collaborations is is here to stay.
It's going to have to grow. And with that, so not just the people who were doing due diligence, but as part of their job,
but actually blending that into an awareness amongst the research community as well.
And we saw some analogies to the entire impact agenda. There were not only were impact professionals and spawned as a culture,
but also researchers themselves became much more familiar with the impact agenda.
And we did feel that there could be some hope for for engineering this into things more because it is a pressing and significant issue.
And one of my number did say saying, I think I think it's just worth repeating.
You know, the recent speech from the MI5 director, which is talking about the importance of protection of knowledge.
So my sense was that we needed funders to lead on this security issue.
But where they led others would follow when we actually felt we'd like to make
a recommendation that we needed better resourcing at the due diligence support,
particularly within universities. And finally, when we were looking at transnational collaboration and and the real benefits
and the challenges around it was collaboration and service was communication.
And communication in all of its forms.
And what we were reflecting on, and of course, is as many will have spoken about yesterday is is the fact that at the moment we're doing fine,
but we're having very transactional conversations. And if we're really serious about the research and innovation agenda,
we need to get back to having more creative and disruptive conversations that will spawn more ideas and actually more solutions.
And of course, the informality of conversations over coffee in the bar, cetera.
So we think that that's absolutely crucial going forward. And I guess something that we we just felt it was important to flag.
Was it really mustn't forget when we're looking at any of these kinds of sort of collaborative ventures,
the importance of people and the importance of relationships?
And then we have one final thing to to put in left field, which was not to assume that the world was indeed a level playing field.
And if we're thinking about diversity and diversity in all of its senses,
we really have to consider and this is particularly within the communications piece that not every country
is quite on the same in the same place from a sort of technological and I.T. perspective as others.
And so we we need to think about that as we think about how we engineer some of these collaborations and with with that sort of diversity in mind,
actually thinking about the fact that collaborating with some countries,
South Africa, which which isn't as well provision actually may be an opportunity to look at where those needs
lie as part of the greater research and innovation challenges that that sit around the world.
So. So let's let's be open. Let's be diverse and let's keep talking.
That's a slinky. Hello, I'm are you going to reduce me or I'm going to introduce myself at this stage, it seems to be.
I'm going to perhaps to you. Oh, that the esteemed Alice Frost.
So my group was small, but but a really, really great problem-solving group.
So I thought we made quite a lot of progress on the opportunities and the challenges.
So, I mean, we started off, I was the only funder and I had some universities and they all beat me up for the question of funding bureaucracy.
And I confess to the fact that we have a collaboration fund called the Connecting Capability Fund.
But we have funded, I think, a university in Columbia as a partner but wouldn't fund one in Scotland.
So I think we then agreed that there, you know, and I think we in some ways, they forgave me and we dismissed from the bureaucracy to some extent.
But I think the team made a good point that, you know, they detected in funders and public agencies that speak,
you know, there is a strong sense of unilateral agendas,
the importance of their own countries and and therefore leaders and agencies need to speak in sort
of multi type multi not lateral in multilateral terms to encourage multilateral collaboration.
I think the second point we made was then we got really stuck into that.
So we thought that was quite the kind of some of the funders issues we talked about were probably too small scale.
And we really need to look at the kind of designing the big challenges that are really worth doing in a multilateral sense.
And I think the team did really good in terms of defining where those kind of those kind of multinational kind of approaches were best.
And I think a successful one we cited was under Pulse UK Government Prime Minister David Cameron.
There was something called the Venture Discovery Fund Simas, which looked into novel drugs,
and it pulled together universities as universities and researchers, venture capital entrepreneurs, and that was thought to be a good model.
And that was also noted the similar challenge that hadn't worked so well was something like antimicrobials.
I mean, I think the team then sort of defined the criteria for these kind of big challenge efforts,
and they were where there was a large, concerted effort is needed, but with a very focussed challenge.
And that was the difference inside Ovid 19 and climate change that climate change is lots and lots of challenges,
whereas COVID had that kind of real focus.
And finally, it had to have it had to be a compelling problem,
which put it at the put the problem at the highest level of attention in many different governments minds.
And I suppose we talked in terms of whether that was an opportunity in something like developing post-pandemic resilience in a multinational sense.
So I think that was a very interesting discussion there.
And finally, I think as the analysis group, we then talked, although we withdrew from the kind of bureaucracy to the big picture.
We then talked a little about social capital that underpinning these kind of big multinational challenges that.
Multilateral challenges that governments and organisations might engage with,
it is important underpinning that to have a sense of social capital and an end,
a sympathy and engagement and a common language across the participants for these multi multilateral challenges to work well.
Of course, then we reflected that science research is very much a.
There is a sense of a common community, a common purpose and a common language.
So it's not.
It's understandable why then many governments look to research and science and innovation as being a potential source of future multilateral actions.
So that was all of you. Well, thanks, Ellis.
So our group, my name is Fariba, by the way. I'm I work with Joe at the National Centre for Universities and Business.
So we had a really great sort of, I guess, representative group in terms of industry,
university and kind of the third sector as well as across sort of international boundaries.
We had representation from the states, Canada and the UK and Belgium, in fact.
So really good discussion. I think we started out in perhaps a bit more negative on on the role of government.
There was a in terms of impressions from a UK perspective, there was recognition that we've had the government has had great ambition,
but there's been a lot of setbacks in terms of the kind of communication and policy rhetoric that's that's come, come, that's kind of followed.
And it's and there was recognition as well that it's been difficult to get through some of the red tape that makes collaboration happen.
There was but recognising as well that we should be accountable to governments who allocate funding.
That's that's obviously part of the equation.
But sometimes there's too much emphasis on the government itself kind of actioning that change and whether
there's there's too much involvement at times and the kind of geopolitics that sometimes drives this agenda,
recognising that sometimes it's better to delegate to the partnerships to deliver
the best work and allow those to kind of go forward and and make things happen.
There was some discussion around whether a state can ever be truly entrepreneurial if it's if it's state driven.
But also understanding that the kind of sweeping away all of the red tape is doesn't always work.
So there is a role for government and that and that can be around incentives and ensuring that we are making the right decisions,
putting in the red tape where it's effective and making and putting in the right people to make quick and well-informed decisions.
We we talked about seeing more scientifically educated people at the top table and that was a
real positive and that that should be that should continue and they should be listened to.
The flip side being that policy and science can then become intertwined and policy and policy changes and certain science has dropped.
So I guess, you know, the fallout from COVID, for example,
the public unhappiness can be directed at the scientists in the same way as politicians, whereas they're not they're not politicians.
So really needing to take that kind of damages the public trust in science and and trying to obtain a balanced,
balanced approach where we're being collaborative but keeping keeping that the science and policy separate in the eyes of the public.
We talked about governments kind of truly incentivising global collaborations in R&D,
building those linkages between institutions that where where universities find it difficult to create those in those partnerships themselves.
And that really needs kind of that thoughtful government intervention to speed up and create those productive partnerships.
So. Someone brought up the global pricing partnership approach that where a global carbon price pricing approach,
where whereby I think governments agreed across different nations that what what, how they would approach it.
And that has really catalysed R&D collaboration with in that area in Canada.
At a municipal level, we talked about the right approach to net to national government intervention intervention and where that those powers should
perhaps be devolved and and how that can really incentivise regions to adopt recommended initiatives such as green energy,
for example. The discussion flowed into open access and open data, a really interesting but very nuanced debate.
Not every country views the role of open access in the same way, so recognising that sharing research routinely is very useful, but it can.
In some instances, it is needed that closed data or closed research is a necessity.
And then we got into the question the kind of discussion question, too, I guess, that the the challenges around collaboration,
which inevitably Brexit and the cuts to foreign aid were recognised as big challenges here in the UK.
It's it's also been the kind of big drop that's been associated with postgraduates coming from abroad,
increasing numbers of protocols facing researchers when they wish to collaborate.
So that gets into the red tape debate.
And GDPR has been a big one for for colleagues in the European Union and certainly in the for the UK in the past as well.
And that's kind of really prevented speedy responses to the pandemic as one example where whereby,
you know, collaboration just didn't happen because there was so much GDPR red tape to get to get through.
We also talked about again, the security issues, just like other groups,
relationship with China have had been so closely scrutinised, and this has really hampered collaboration across the board.
Some institutions feeling caught between the the politics of international situations and and just not having clarity on where,
you know, how to deal with this, where they can move forward, where they need to be more,
more cautious and what are the guidelines and really needing that clarity to enable these partnerships to happen?
We talked about the kind of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinarity of partnerships and how these are often created by organic contacts.
Not always and but who aren't always necessarily the best people to collaborate on the work.
So we need to be more strategic and cycle experts in and out of a project over a number of years.
So not just the usual three year funding cycle, but making sure that that's kind of we're looking across the piece of a research project where new,
new experts are able to become coming into that collaboration or that partnership.
So needing to find the balance between many collaborative, collaborative sharing expertise but not diluting the outcomes.
We also talked about where we're moving into.
I think this was this kind of dominated the discussion of it where we're moving into an era that is that seems to be more state controlled.
There's that's definitely a concern. It has led to more interference.
It goes even beyond budget cuts. But in some countries, this is becoming more of an ideological debate as there's been not.
There hasn't been a lot of pushback because most believe that governments have reacted well to COVID and did not want to oppose the plans.
So, so recognising again that R&D can be used as a political capital or collateral and the
kind of the funding or the policy initiatives haven't always followed the rhetoric.
And then we kind of touched on Eileen's point in the final and the final kind of questions in the last session,
which are about how it's returning to this debate, debate about metrics and needing to consistently justify the funding and measure impact can.
And that return on investment can also hamper some of these commercial partnerships where impact is less tangible or may be longer term.
And this need to kind of satisfy the government and impositions around kind of shorter term impacts or or what demonstrating that returns.
So a really, really lively discussion, and we made some really good progress.
I'll leave it there. OK, I'm going to assume you can all hear me.
All right. I'm Mark Shabnam, associate vice chancellor at North Carolina State University in the U.S. We had a very good
discussion in our group and talked a lot about collaboration and as a function of partnerships,
but also with a slant towards commercialisation. So and I should also note we ended up combining sessions.
So I'm somewhat giving an update on behalf of Greg King and his session as well and sharing that jointly.
So we started talking a little bit about whether there's a mismatch between individual or institutional incentives for partnering.
And I thought this was an interesting approach because it really carried forward across a lot of discussion
topics that we had and kind of set the tone for not just whether those incentives are in place for partnerships,
but also as a function of commercialisation. And so in thinking about that,
we also recognise that often when we're trying to develop partnerships where there might be a bit of a commercialisation mindset,
sometimes the financial model doesn't always support the mechanisms to drive that one way or the other.
And part of what we discussed there as well was that, you know,
the priorities of an institution might be different sometimes from the career motivations
or the commercialisation motivations of individuals with those with research.
And sometimes that can get out of sync relative to not being able to achieve a larger goal in total when those when those elements aren't aligned.
We also spoke about the function of different regional differences or differences by countries, perhaps,
and whether there's more of a focus in the US around partnering internally amongst different institutions within a particular country,
or if there are incentives to go beyond that, to foster more international collaboration.
And as we think about some of the grander challenges and that could be approached through multilateral research.
Certainly, I think we would all aspire to more of that international collaboration approach.
But we recognise that perhaps in the US, our incentives are more to function within country and maybe less around international collaboration.
But but it could be very different and probably is very different in the UK and EU relative to trying from that perspective,
trying to have more international collaborations and the like.
So that brought up a great discussion around do we have the incentives to switch or do we need to switch or change our starting points?
And in other words,
are we going to be disadvantaged by having that kind of mismatch of approach relative to how we can all work together to solve the bigger problems?
We also had a really good debate around whether this is a common issue across all disciplines,
or if perhaps we could solve some of this differently by choosing a discipline by which to drive.
And some might target different partnerships. And a great example of that was through global health,
where it's almost encouraged or required for all of us to to work across and maybe less around the boundaries or the pursuits that we've started with.
We also talked about whether there could be local or regional incentives that could be developed as
starting points to help move beyond sometimes where the current path is to partnering and collaborating.
And and I think that could be to be a good way to maybe incentivised overcoming some of the challenges as well.
We also talked about the tensions within some universities not being set up to do commercialisation as a function of partnership and whether sometimes
we should think about segmenting partnerships separately from commercialisation
and perhaps not putting the burden of commercialisation on partnership,
which I think is is novel.
But that's that was a part of our discussion around whether we were trying to in some ways when commercialisation is a factor.
Are we trying to make it university into a business or a business into a university?
And how do we need to be more deliberate about that and our approach is trying to overcome sometimes?
Existing headwinds or policies are good, we need to think about how to influence policies,
but also create added incentives to overcome this fundamental challenge that we
started with around the mismatch and incentives that ultimately could be in place of,
or sometimes challenging just the fundamental principle of how we partner best.
We move then from talking about challenges into opportunities to talk more
specifically about how we could use partnerships to spur more institutional growth.
And and I think in that respect, we're talking about institutional grew of that's a function of partnership,
more multimatic multilateral research to move towards greater accomplishments through that partnership.
And part of that was around finding the right model to partner by learning from others and growing together and and
continuing on versus continuing on the current path that we might be might be headed on and from the from up front.
We also wanted to talk about where partnerships, how we could identify partnerships that are more diverse than just simply saying,
how do we work together, potentially within different universities collaborations?
But how could we incentivise universities, industry and government partnerships together,
which I think we could all agree on is really the best approach. But how do we incentivise that broader collaboration as a stronger opportunity?
And also, how do we overcome the inherent fear of commercialisation as a foundation for partnering Alisyn and
make it a couple of comments that we've talked about as well that I'll just highlight here in closing,
which was really around trying to understand how we move from transactional and
somewhat incremental discussions when we're on a path which we believe to be correct.
But how do we find more disruptive pathways to test, try and do something different to evolve?
And then ultimately, how do we recognise the differences that are out there?
Find ways across universities, industry and government to work together to recognise those differences,
but then find the right partners and approach to truly move in a better direction going forward.
So with that, I appreciate the opportunity for comment. Thank you. Excellent.
Thank you, Mark. And thank you to all of the presenters for feeding back and giving us the rich insights from each of the groups.
And I'm struck and probably thinking. Thomas Koch looks, and he's got to have the joyous task of trying to bring all of this together.
I think there is a lot of different themes that have just emerged, and I was trying to take a note of some of them,
but I I would probably before I sort of try and surmise some of that.
I do think a huge thank you from me to all of the groups and all of their kind
of contributions in the group for doing exactly what I hoped you would do, which is to take those kind of opportunities and challenges.
And certainly and if Autoline and Roger was still here, I think we have given them lots of food for thought in terms of some of those things.
I think I'm not going to try and recount all of the different things and summarise the summaries.
But but I do think one of the things that I was struck by and thought would be the case today,
which is that clearly this is at a number of different levels that are a really interesting inflexion point.
There are technology advances and innovation advances that we are, you know, we are right in the middle of this case,
and there's a real opportunity for the sector on all of it, all sides of the U.S. and the U.K. and across Europe.
But I also think we do need to be mindful of the way that the systems and both sides are set up and in particular,
how we encourage collaboration because I'm certainly international partnerships,
because some of the some of the incentives in the system may be perverse incentives they may push against what we are trying to achieve.
But I think one of the things that I was struck about and I'm going to hopefully seamlessly hope set up tomorrow is that on day one,
we've really got into the detail of how have we responded, how have we reacted to a global crisis and how have we?
And I think the community, in its broadest sense, science, universities, government and industry have responded brilliantly to that.
Today, I think we've talked about ambition and about how we genuinely become a science superpower is how we push all of the different levers together.
But I think what's really interesting and a sort of recurring theme this morning is
that what we do need to do is think about where are those next grand challenges?
And that kind of gets to this kind of question of why international partnerships are important.
And it feels to me that one of the recurring themes is about not just achieving scale,
but also achieving breadth to which to to attack all these grand challenges, we need probably a much greater sum of the parts to come.
Together and have that kind of combined strength, and that hopefully sets up tomorrow because I think what we are going to look at tomorrow.
We've got a fantastic programme ahead of us is that transitioning to a sustainable future,
but thinking about how you get the best of universities and industry working together to tackle something that,
as you know, a societies across the globe we can we do need to think through and make sure
that we are working together to look after our planet for generations to come.
And I think certainly there will be rich debate and discussion on a very pertinent and topical discussion.