The Centre’s latest Policy Workshop – The Values and Valuation of Natural Capital, organised jointly with the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) at the Institute for Government on 13 October – brought together policy makers from Defra, DECC, CLG, DfE, BIS and DfT, alongside zoologists, economists, engineers, geographers and conservation scientists.

We are delighted to announce the launch of an ambitious and exciting new programme in science and policy research.

Behaviour change experts and officials responsible for policies to encourage increased energy efficiency met earlier this month in a workshop organised by CSaP for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The UK's targets for reducing carbon emissions are ambitious and a wide range of tools for emissions reduction merit consideration.

What role can the Centre for Science and Policy play in cultivating and nurturing scientists with an ability and passion for communication and policy?

Sarah Mukherjee delivered the CSaP's third distinguished lecture on how politics and media influence public feeling about climate change, and the impact it has on policy making.

To mark the launch of the Centre Interest Group on Genomic Medicine, the CSaP hosted a dinner discussion on 12 May at Queens' College, Cambridge. Sir Mark Walport led the discussion.

May saw the launch, in pilot form, of our Policy Fellowship Programme. Cambridge researchers welcomed the opportunity to meet the policy makers, noting the value that they had gained by "getting a window into the policy environment".

CSaP is working with the UK Innovation Research Centre (UK~IRC) and others to design a consultation, seminar and workshop programme which will bring together the latest research and those who are best placed to apply it.

CSaP completed its series of Whitehall Consultations at the Royal Society in London on 4 March, continuing the process of building the bridgehead in the policy community begun in January and February 2010.

Attendees at the CSaP's second Distinguished Lecture were taken briskly through 50 years of science policy research in 50 minutes as Professor Ben Martin, former Director of SPRU, led them on a whistle-stop tour of the twenty key "steps forward" that have been made in the field.