Liz Bell
Research and Innovation Partnerships Manager, Institute of Bioengineering, QMUL elizabeth.bell@qmul.ac.uk
Partner and Director, EdAd Ltdl bell@edadsolutions.com

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.99.40

I’ve been fascinated about science and its applications since I was a teenager who was captivated by an ex-industrial chemist teacher at my secondary school nearly blowing up our lab during one of our practical sessions. The arts and humanities just couldn’t compete with explosions, so I packed my bags in 1980 to go to Lancaster University to study biological sciences, which then migrated to my leaving with a BSc in biochemistry instead. Friends in Physoc have told me over the years that this meant that I have always really been a physiologist but didn’t know it!

I’d realised during my first degree studies that my fascination with science had metamorphosed into a passion for scientific research, its applications and its importance for society. I was very fortunate to get a rare research council funded place on an MSc course at Aston University in 1984, which was one of the first ever courses on science and society. As a science graduate this led to me getting an MSc and PhD in this area from the Aston Business School (the PhD thesis focusing on the use of co-citation analysis to map scientific research fields from citation databases). Just as well that I had that management grounding, as after getting my PhD in 1989 I found myself embarking on a career managing and making policy about research, its supporting education systems, and its applications.

This area, where scientific research meets its applications, has become a great source of employment for people interested in the “Bigger Picture”, and I would really encourage younger readers to look at career opportunities here if you are planning to leave research after getting your doctorate. My career has involved working for most types of organisations supporting the research and education ecosystem, including a funder research council, a science based charity, the diplomatic service, a learned society (yes, I mean our beloved Physoc), four universities and two shared service delivery companies for education and research. I hope that by giving you below a flavour of some of the jobs I’ve had you might be inspired to join our community. Science still needs you after you have left the lab, it couldn’t survive without its managers and policy advocates.

I did a couple of short research contracts at Aston and Humberside University in Hull in parallel with, and just after my PhD studies, respectively looking at the role of biotechnology in the production of food flavours and colours and New Chemical Entity innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. Then my first ”proper” job (as my family saw it) was commissioning and managing innovation research programmes and centres in the Industry, Economy and Environment Research Development Group at the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in 1990. Then, presumably because I might have learnt a couple of things about innovation issues from working with those leading social science academics, I was then seconded to The Oxford Trust in 1991 to lead a two year research project working with the universities and research labs in Oxfordshire to make their expertise and technologies accessible to local high tech companies. The Oxford Trust was, and is, a charity set up by one of the first really successful university spin out entrepreneurs in the UK, Sir Martin Wood (of Oxford University and Oxford Instruments). His work as an engineer is of great interest to physiological research as his spin out company made magnets that revolutionised medical imaging. I was lucky to work very closely with Sir Martin as the Chair of my Steering Group, learning loads from him about the effective commercialisation of research, and producing reports and papers on the development of innovation systems. These were lapped up by the then Department of Trade and Industry in formulating some of their initial forays into initiatives supporting innovation.

ESRC then claimed me back as Deputy Director of Postgraduate Training in 1993, so I was thoroughly immersed in all things to do with the support of Masters and PhD programmes in the social sciences (including developing new national accreditation and studentship allocation systems), but still managed to play in the field of innovation by setting up their first CASE studentship scheme, and representing the Research Council for four years on a Whitehall committee dealing with innovation and technology transfer (the TCS Sponsors Forum). I’m afraid that brought me to the attention of the diplomatic service, which needed a scientist to spend five years in Moscow from 1997 leading the British Council Science Team that was busy building links between the UK and Russian research  communities following the end of the Cold War. We also helped the Russians to take their first steps in reformulating their science policies to build a national innovation system, the lessons learned from our pilot projects in venture capital, intellectual property legislation and management, innovation training for research institutes, support for high tech companies etc being absorbed into President Putin’s science and innovation plan for Russia.

At the end of my fixed term diplomatic contract, I, like a lot of expats, had to quickly search for a job to re-establish myself in the UK. I arrived at Brunel University in 2002, where I worked for two years as their Technology Commercialisation Manager (learning skills such as intellectual property contract management and the dark arts of briefing patent attorneys!), followed by six years at the Physiological Society as Head of Policy and External Affairs (doing such things as lobbying in support of animal research, debating with parliamentary contacts about biomedical issues, and setting up our links with organisations such as Sense About Science).

Like many mums I then said goodbye to the commuting lifestyle and took a career break for a year during 2011, spending a lot of time with my daughter and working closely with her primary school as a governor (I’m still Vice Chair of the Governing Body for my sins). I then looked around for a more local job and found a fixed term contract in 2012 as Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Janet UK, the UK’s research and education ICT network based at Harwell, where I worked with the Chief Technology Officer to build the business case for the next iteration of the network, Janet 6, and secure a very large amount of money from the Cabinet Office and Treasury to build it. This work was also vital to our physiological community as research is increasingly reliant on the crunching of big data, and universities need a very high tech network to support it.

This led to my being headhunted for another famous shared service delivery company, UCAS in Cheltenham (so back to commuting again, hey ho!). I was Head of Policy leading the team that horizon scanned for policy developments affecting UCAS’ products and services in education admissions and which engaged with Government stakeholders throughout the devolved UK countries. Highlights included being a member of the Welsh Government’s Steering Group that designed the new Welsh Baccalaureate, and a chance to really understand the policy issues affecting the talent pipeline for research. Sadly major cuts bit, and I had to lead my team through a painful business review and redundancy process. This is a reality that you may well face in your own careers in our economically uncertain world.  But I would say that new opportunities will be there if you look for them, and I left UCAS with 3 senior colleagues, to set up our own education admissions advisory company (EdAd) in 2014. This is in the throes of its first contract with a Welsh University. It is a judgement on me. I’ve spend so many years working with, and thinking about spin out entrepreneurs, that it was perhaps inevitable that I would become one. Sir Martin would laugh!

And where does bioengineering come into this? Well, not quite sure how it happened, but as well as being a Partner and Director of EdAd, I’m now also working with Queen Mary University of London to develop their new Institute of Bioengineering from their science and engineering departments, medical and dental schools, and associated hospital (Barts). The main focus of my work there is getting them organised (cat herding skills useful) and building up their research and industrial partnerships to conduct medically guided advanced bioengineering research focused on developing medical solutions. I have made a very personal commitment to bioengineering research, having had my hip replaced in January as part of a clinical trial with their rivals at Oxford, and donating my old hip to the Oxford BioBank!

I think I probably just can’t help myself when it comes to the biomedical sciences and innovation!