Professional development workshop for the Department for Transport

Linking science advice with policy making

This two-day workshop has been designed to bring together Executive Officer civil servants from the Department for Transport with early-career researchers from the University of Cambridge. The purpose is to provide participants with a greater understanding of the opportunities and challenges of linking science advice to policy making.

The first day will begin with a panel discussion examining the main challenges and road blocks in linking evidence and expertise to policy making, followed by a Q&A session. Participants include CSaP Executive Director Dr Rob Doubleday, and Dr Andrew Chilvers from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The second day features a series of discussions from policy makers and academics discussing how the relationship between academia and policy has helped their work and research. In the afternoon the participants will be split in to mixed groups of researchers and civil servants to work on particular policy issues;

• How can we increase the uptake of low emission vehicles?
• What changes can we make to improve urban air quality?
• How can we improve railway services?
• How can road user charging be used to alleviate congestion?
• How can we change the transport network to reduce regional disparities?
• How can we double cycling by 2025?

Each group will feed back their conclusion to a panel for comment and discussion.

Thumbnail image from Simopala on Flickr licensed under CC BY 4.0