Press Release: Cambridge launches new Centre for Science and Policy

13 July 2009

The University of Cambridge has created the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP), dedicated to bringing together the best scientific thinking across all disciplines in order to inform public policy. 

CSaP will build upon the strengths of the University to inform debate surrounding these issues by facilitating contact between policy makers and scientific experts. Cambridge has a constellation of recognised leaders in a range of disciplines which can be brought to bear on the widening range of policy issues where input from science and technology and the social sciences is imperative. It is also well placed to draw on expertise from around the world, and to engage in productive dialogue with governments, the private sector and international organisations.  

The Centre will be a major resource for the UK but international in its activities. In order to reach as many organisations as possible that inform policy, it will work with other academic institutions, think tanks, and the research elements embedded within Government, business and international organisations.

Dr David Cleevely FREng has been appointed the Founding Director of the CSaP. He brings expertise in engineering, economics, biotechnology businesses, networking organisations and government policy formation to this task. He will be a member of the Executive Committee of CSaP, whose other members include Sir Tom Blundell, Head of the School of Biological Sciences; Professor Arnoud De Meyer, Director of the Judge Business School; Lord Eatwell, Director of the Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy; Frank Kelly, Professor of the Mathematics of Systems; Professor Ian Leslie, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research; and Sir David Wallace, Director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Dr Cleevely said: “In the coming decades, humanity faces unprecedented challenges and great opportunities. The world's growing population, coupled with advancing technology, poses threats to the climate and biosphere that could be irreversibly damaging. Additionally, advances in bio- and nanotechnology offer immense prospects, but raise new ethical and security dilemmas. These new technologies and emerging issues will continue to transform and enrich our lives, but also pose a unique set of challenges for policy makers.

“I am very excited to be leading this initiative, which builds on real strengths at Cambridge. A key feature of the Centre will be a focus on communication, facilitating the most effective engagement between policy makers and leading scientists whose expertise spans the wide spectrum necessary for informed decisions.”

CSaP continues and extends the work undertaken by the Cambridge University Government Policy Programme (CUGPOP) which ran as a series of extremely successful seminars between 1998 and 2006 for senior policy makers.  

It will engage in five main strands of activity:

1. Centre Interest Groups (CIGs) provide the forums to discuss emerging issues, each meeting 3-4 times a year to discuss a topic which cuts across engineering, science, computing, mathematics, the social sciences, law and philosophy.

2. A Centre Fellows Programme, whereby academic staff will be funded over a period of one year to undertake work on the policy implications of their research area, to receive the very best training in communications skills, and to be seconded for short periods to assist with policy making and to gain direct experience in communicating the results of their work.

3. A Visiting Fellows Programme, whereby  researchers, industrialists and policy-makers will come to the University to carry out research with Centre Fellows and participate in Centre Interest Groups and workshops.

4. A series of workshops based on the work of the Centre Fellows, Visiting Fellows and researchers from the University and elsewhere will exchange current thinking in science and policy issues with senior policy makers.

5. A network of Associates: people and organisations within the University of Cambridge and elsewhere who are interested in contributing to the work of the CSaP through the CIGs, Policy Workshops or other means.

More details may be found on the CSaP website:http://csap.org.uk/ 

The creation of the Centre has been made possible through the generosity of donors including the David Harding Foundation and the Isaac Newton Trust, and internal funding by the University of Cambridge itself.
 

-Ends- 

For additional information please contact:

Genevieve Maul, Office of Communications, University of Cambridge

Tel: +44 (0) 1223 332 300

Mob: +44 (0) 7774 017 464

Email: genevieve.maul@admin.cam.ac.uk

Notes for editors: 

1. Dr David Cleevely FREng – David Cleevely is the Founding Director of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge. He is Chairman of CRFS, the spectrum monitoring company, which he co-founded in July 2007, and the founder and former Chairman of telecoms consultancy Analysys (acquired by Datatec International in 2004). In 1998, he co-founded the web based antibody company Abcam (ABC.L) with Jonathan Milner and will step down as Chairman later in 2009. In late 2004 he co-founded the 3G pico base station company, 3WayNetworks, which was sold to Airvana in April 2007. He joined the Board of Trutap (formerly Hotxt) - a mobile phone social networking provider in October 2005 and joined the Board of ionscope in 2007 and became Chairman in May 2008. He has been a prime mover behind Cambridge Network, co-founder of Cambridge Wireless, co-founder and member of the board of Cambridge Angels and is a member of the IET Telecoms Sector Panel. For 8 years until March 2009 he had been a member of the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board, and recently held an Industrial Fellowship at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

2. The Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP): The goal of the Centre is to facilitate engagement between world-leading science and key policy makers in the UK and more widely.  For more information, please visit: http://csap.org.uk/

3. Cambridge University Government Policy Programme (CUGPOP): Between 1998 and 2006 some 16 one-day seminars were organised for Government ministers and senior civil servants, on topics spanning cloning, uncertainty and the environment, food, water, space exploration, and stem cells.   See http://www.cam.ac.uk/about/scienceseminars/background.html