SUMMARY OF CST MEETING ON 17/18 March 2008
Attendees
The meeting was held in London and was chaired by Professor John Beddington and Dame Janet Finch. The other members present were:
John Beringer, Geoffrey Boulton, Peter Davies, Wendy Hall, Hermann Hauser, Alan Hughes, Sue Ion, Paul Nurse, Keith Peters, Raj Rajagopal, Philip Ruffles, Michael Sterling, Kathy Sykes and Mark Walport.
Project updates included water technologies, corporate venturing and nanotechnologies amongst others. CST was joined for dinner by Janez Potocnik, European Commissioner for Science and Research. Discussions included whether EU Member States are willing to remove barriers to deliver the benefits of science; Janez acknowledged that there were problems with the infrastructure although many calls for infrastructure proposals were not well co-ordinated; also climate change was a good example of mission based research within the EU.
The following day discussions centered around the project ‘Policy through dialogue review’ and the way in which the subgroup was reviewing the Government’s implementation of the actions it set out in response to CST’s report. The discussion concluded that to have a real affect in this area Ministers and Permanent Secretaries would need to be convinced of the benefits for the policies to be affective.
The Government/Universities project – John Denham has asked the CST to investigate ways in which the interaction between academia and policy makers could be improved. This investigation should include analysis of structures of both areas to understand what is working well.