PhD Student, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

CSaP-Government Secondee, Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (2015)

This summer I spent my time on a part-time project at BIS, a secondment opportunity to help support the refresh of the Roadmap for Synthetic Biology. The field of Synthetic Biology has been recognised by the UK government as one of the eight Great Technologies to drive economic growth in the future. Quite a lot of investment has been made to support this initiative – from both public and private sectors. The UK has established six multidisciplinary Synthetic Biology Research Centres, and I was interested in having a more direct experience of working in the policy environment with this emerging technology.

When I first started, I must admit there was quite a lot of information to process and to keep up with, especially since it was quite different from my day-to-day tasks in my own studies and research. The members of BIS and the Synthetic Biology Leadership Council whom I engaged with were welcoming and very supportive. We had an initial meeting to inform me of up-to-date developments in Synthetic Biology and areas of the Roadmap refresh which I could support over the next few months.

Next, there were follow-up meetings with various members of the community, for instance with the Knowledge Transfer Network to understand the Synthetic Biology Special Interest Group. To keep myself abreast of developments in this sector, I found myself reading a range of policy documents. For example, such documents would pertain to industries and biotechnology as a whole in the UK, Europe, and other countries for comparison, as well as reports on collaborations between businesses and university research, any disconnect between them, and recommendations on the way forward.

For me, one of the greatest experiences I obtained was to have become familiar with the lexicon of this policy and business environment and to use it comfortably. Although the terms and phrases were not unbeknownst to me, it was quite different from the scientific language that I would be using on a daily basis at the University. This was a gradual learning process, through the consultation workshop with industrial and academic stakeholders, SynBio company showcases at Cambridge’s OpenPlant forum, as well as individual consultation interviews with stakeholders. During this process, I designed sets of interview questions and collected feedback from various stakeholders in businesses and the research centres. Then, I extracted information from these consultations and distilled them into key messages as policy recommendations. Overall, these are all important, practical skills that I have further developed to help transition my career outside of academia.

Another aspect that I have come to learn is the fluctuation in the working pace between academia and the policy environment. While both may have their peaks and troughs, generally speaking the timeframe for one to achieve deliverables in the policy environment is much shorter than those in academia. Although this was something I was previously aware of, it took some adjusting to the slightly different expectations in the two work settings.

In terms of bridging the interface between science and policy, a mutual understanding of the dynamics of each sector would be necessary. Overall throughout my summer secondment, I have had the rewarding experience to see strong efforts in the UK in working towards evidence-informed policy making.