Paul Clark is Director of Policy at Universities UK. He is responsible for overseeing the full range of higher education policy development at UUK, coordinating priorities, and shaping the future policy agenda on behalf of member institutions.

Prior to that, he worked as a manager in a number of institutions in the higher education sector and the public sector, including holding senior management positions at the University of Oxford. Paul was educated at the University of Oxford, and holds an MBA from the University of London. He has also worked in local politics and in several not-for-profit roles.


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David Way is Director of Knowledge Exchange and Special Projects in the Technology Strategy Board, an executive non-departmental public body reporting to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The Technology Strategy Board promote and support research into, and development and exploitation of, science and technology and new ideas for the benefit of business, in order to increase sustainable economic growth and improve the quality of life. David has specific responsibility for promoting knowledge exchange, including leadership of the Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs), Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) and the Catapult initiative. In addition, he leads on the exploitation of space for UK wealth creation, with the TSB a delivery partner to the new UK Space Agency.

David read the Engineering Tripos at Cambridge University, graduating with First-Class Honours. He then worked on a broad range of military and civil air vehicle and propulsion research and assessment at the Royal Aerospace Establishment, now part of QinetiQ.

Following a year on secondment at the Royal College of Defence Studies, David joined the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in 2000 in the role of Director Aerospace & Defence Technologies, with responsibility for promoting the technology interests of the UK aerospace sector within government. He then transferred to Innovation Group (latterly the Office of Science and Innovation) where he was responsible for developing and delivering the Technology Programme to promote UK wealth creation, and also for the National Measurement System.

Presentation: Promoting Open Innovation: Building Networking Bridges Between Businesses and with Academia

The Technology Strategy Board is the UK innovation agency, our goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation; everything we do is driven by one question: will it help UK business bring new ideas and technologies to market faster. Networking is key to helping us achieve this, building cross-sectoral and technology relations between businesses and with academia. The talk will outline how we promote this through collaborative projects, Knowledge Transfer Networks and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.

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Graeme Rosenberg has worked in higher education policy at HEFCE for 13 years. He is currently REF Manager, having run the council's developmental work on REF since 2007, including the bibliometrics pilot and consultation exercises.

Prior to that, Graeme worked in a variety of roles developing the council's policies in funding and assessment of research and teaching. Before joining HEFCE he undertook a PhD in history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Presentation: Raising the Bar – How the Research Excellence Framework Can Help to Improve Research Quality and Outcomes

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. The assessments aim to provide accountability for public investment in research, provide benchmarking information and produce evidence of the benefits that research investments bring.

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Matthew Hallsworth is Head of External Relations for the NIHR Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure (NOCRI). He leads on external stakeholder relations and engagement with the pharmaceutical industry.

NOCRI works with companies to support collaboration with the expert investigators and research facilities funded by the Department of Health, from early-phase translational medicine through to later-phase clinical trials.

Prior to NOCRI, Matthew was Head of Communications at the UK Clinical Research Collaboration – a partnership of government, charities, industry, the NHS, academia, regulators and patients focused on improving the clinical research environment in the UK.

Matthew has also had research management roles at the medical charity Asthma UK and at the Department of Health's National R&D Programme.

During his earlier career, Matthew was a Research Fellow in Respiratory Medicine at Guy's & St Thomas' Hospitals, London, where he completed his PhD on the mechanisms of inflammation in asthma and allergic disease.

Presentation: Partnership and Collaboration: Maximising the Opportunities for Life Sciences Research in the UK

Innovative models of partnership between universities and the NHS are helping to drive forward health research in the UK. These partnerships form a strong foundation for efficient collaboration with the life sciences industry, leading to potential benefit for patients and the economy.

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Deborah took up her current post in October 2007. She moved to Imperial from the University of Sussex, where she had been Librarian since 2000. Before that, she had spent her entire professional career in Northern Ireland, latterly as Assistant Director of Information Services at the University of Ulster.

An active member of her profession, Deborah frequently contributes to national and international conferences and in 1998 was awarded the Library Association's Charter Centenary Medal. From 2005-2006 she was President of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), and was awarded her Fellowship of CILIP in 2004.
Deborah is currently Head of UK Research Reserve (UKRR), Chair of MIMAS, a Board member of JISC Collections, Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) and Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and a member of the ABES (Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Supérieur).

For more information see: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.shorley


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Spencer Thompson is a research assistant at the Big Innovation Centre, an initiative from The Work Foundation and Lancaster University. The Centre works with stakeholders from both the public and private sector, as well as leading universities and other institutions, to co-create solutions to the innovation challenges facing the UK. His research focuses on a number of policy areas including higher education, intellectual property rights and skills. His recent work includes co-authored reports on reforming the IP system for design, and the changing nature of consumer spending and its impact on innovation in the UK.

Spencer previously worked for the Mayor of London's economic analysis unit, and has a BSc in economics from The University of Sussex. He blogs on a wide variety of innovation issues which are available, alongside his reports, on the Big Innovation Centre website.

www.biginnovationcentre.com
Twitter: @sthompson20


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Stephen Curry is a professor of structural biology at Imperial College London; his primary research interests are in the replication mechanisms of RNA viruses and protein-drug interactions. An active science blogger since 2008 (occamstypewriter.org/scurry), he has also written for the Guardian, New Scientist and the Times Higher Education magazine. Curry also takes a keen interest in scientific activism, most notably in supporting the Campaign for Libel Reform, as vice-chair of Science is Vital and, since the beginning of 2012, has increasingly been writing about and advocating widespread adoption of workable policies on open access.


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Robert Kiley is Head of Digital Services at the Wellcome Library. In this role he is responsible for developing and implementing a strategy to deliver electronic services to the Library's users – both in person and remote.

Currently, Kiley taking a leading role in the implementation of the Trust's open access policy and as such is responsible for liaising with publishers with regard to the Trust's OA policy, and overseeing the development of the UK PubMed Central (http://ukpmc.ac.uk) repository. Robert also acts as the Trust's point of contact for eLife, the new top-tier, open-access research journal to be launched in 2012 with the support of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust

Away from open access related activities, Kiley is also responsible for developing the infrastructure to supports the Wellcome Library's strategy to provide free, online, universal access to the Library's unique and important collections.

Kiley has written a number of books including 'Medical information on the Internet: a guide for health professionals' [Churchill Livingstone, 3rd edn. 2003], 'The Doctor's Guide to the Internet' [RSM, 2001] 'The Patient's Internet Handbook' [RSM 2002] and the 'Nurses Internet Handbook [RSM, 2005].

Kiley is a qualified librarian and an Associate Member of CILIP.


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Robert Doubleday is Executive Director of the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) at the University of Cambridge. CSaP exists to promote engagement between government and academia through supporting networks of leading public policy makers and academics.

Robert's own academic research focuses on the relationship between science, policy and democracy. He has published widely on public engagement with science, especially in the context of emerging technologies. Robert studied Chemistry at Imperial College and Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex. He has PhD in Geography and Science & Technology Studies from University College London and he has studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Web: www.csap.cam.ac.uk/

Presentation: Strengthening Engagement Between Academia and Government Through Networks

The Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) at the University of Cambridge was founded in 2009 with the aim of strengthening engagement between research and public policy. CSaP's approach has been to focus on building networks among academics and policy makers. The presentation will describe how our approach has evolved, and what we have learned along the way about how to support effective knowledge exchange.

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Dan Tovey is a Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Sheffield. He is currently Spokesperson and Principal Investigator of ATLAS-UK, representing the 15 UK institutions participating in the international ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. His main research interest is the search for first evidence of 'supersymmetry' - a new theory of fundamental physics that could explain the origin of mass and the nature of dark matter in the universe. Dan holds a PhD in particle physics from the University of Sheffield.

Presentation: Zeptoscale Science with Global Collaboration: The ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva are now answering fundamental questions about how the universe functions at scales far smaller than the nucleus of an atom. The technical challenges facing scientists and engineers at the birth of this project were immense but were overcome by developing transnational collaborations of unprecedented global scale. The history, structure and sociology of these collaborations will be discussed with a view to identifying lessons for future networks of similar size.

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Amanda Crowfoot is Director of Science Europe, an association of 50 European research funding and research performing organisations. Science Europe, which was established in Brussels in 2011, promotes the collective interests of its members, and supports them in their efforts to foster European research and strengthen the European Research Area (ERA).

Prior to joining UKRO, Amanda was Director of the UK Research Office (UKRO), the Brussels office of the UK Research Councils. Jointly sponsored by all seven Councils, and receiving subscriptions from around 140 universities and other research organisations, UKRO provides practical and strategic advice on accessing and European funding for research, innovation and education, and engaging with European policy in these areas. Before being Director of the Office Amanda was a European Advisor, working with UKRO subscribers in various UK regions, and leading the Office's work on full economic costing in relation to European funding.

Amanda was previously European Projects Manager at the Centre for Research and Policy in Disability at Coventry University, and taught and researched in linguistics at a number of UK universities.

Presentation: International Collaboration: Maximising the Impact of the European Research Area

The aim of the European Research Area is to give researchers, institutions and businesses access to a Europe-wide open space for knowledge and technologies and encourage cross-border cooperation. The current economic climate further underlines the problems of research funding with no single country having the sufficient resources to be competitive on a global scale. Transnational cooperation can help improve the use of national and regional resources so that research outcomes are more efficient and more effective. How can research organisations and institutions directly engage with the other projects and programmes, with the right businesses and commercial partners, and at the right level?

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Martin Yuille holds a readership in biobanking at the University of Manchester, the first such readership in the country. The first biobanking network in the world – the MRC-funded UK DNA Banking Network – was developed with him and Bill Ollier as principal investigators. Martin was Associate Coordinator for the planning of the European biobanking network (BBMRI).

He leads on Manchester's contribution to the scoping of a UK biobanking network funded through the Technology Strategy Board and sponsored by AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline. Martin leads on a Manchester-based project to implement a hub-and-spoke biobanking network across the city's hospitals and university, funded through the Manchester Academic Science Centre.

Presentation: Next Generation Biobanking: The Rise of the Networks

New medicines and health improvements require research biobanking networks of people, things and processes. First steps in this direction will be described.

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Jonathan Sheffield is Chief Executive of the National Institute for Health Research, Clinical Research Network. This organisation is funded by the Department of Health to support the practical delivery of both academic and commercial clinical research in the NHS, and was responsible for recruiting more than half a million patients into clinical studies last year.

Jonathan trained as a doctor at Dundee University, before following a career as a histopathologist at Yeovil District Hospital, where he was instrumental in developing its research capabilities. In 2003, he became Medical Director for the trust, before moving on to University Hospitals Bristol – again as Medical Director.

In 2009, Jonathan was awarded an OBE for services to the NHS. In 2011, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians' Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine – its highest honour – for his contribution in the area of clinical research delivery.

A passionate advocate for clinical research, Jonathan's ambition is for participation in a suitable research study to be a standard treatment option, open to all NHS patients.


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