Rice to lead effort to establish research partnerships with UK

Rice
to lead effort to establish research partnerships with UK
…………………………………………………………………

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News Staff

The British government
has tapped Rice University to lead a consortium of Texas
universities in establishing a collaborative research program
that will pair researchers in Britain with their counterparts
in the Lone Star state.

The United Kingdom
has committed 5 million pounds — about $7.4 million
— over the next five years to establish the collaborative
partnerships in Texas. Rice and participating Texas institutions,
including Baylor College of Medicine, M.D. Anderson Cancer
Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center
at Houston, also have made substantial financial commitments
to the program.

Lord Sainsbury,
British minister for science and innovation, announced the
new program earlier this month at a downtown luncheon sponsored
by the Greater Houston Partnership. In detailing the Texas
component, Sainsbury said Houston has strong research programs
under way in virtually all of the scientific fields that
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has identified as the
most promising: nanoscience, bioscience, information technology
and environmental science.

With complementary
research programs in each of these interrelated fields,
Rice University is well-placed to lead the collaborative
program between British and Texas researchers. The British
component will be led by Imperial College of London.

The collaboration
grew out of an extended visit by Rice President Malcolm
Gillis to the United Kingdom after the opening of International
University–Bremen in Germany last fall. At the time,
Gillis gave a speech on the generation and transfer of 21st
century technology to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, visited
the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University and
met and consulted with his counterparts at Cambridge University
and Imperial College, as well as with Sainsbury. Sir Richard
Sykes, rector of Imperial College, subsequently came to
Houston, visiting with scientists and researchers at Rice,
the Texas Medical Center and other universities.

“Universities
such as Imperial College and Cambridge have undertaken major
initiatives to strengthen and expand scientific research
and development and are reaching out to comparable centers
of teaching and research across the globe, including the
United States,” Gillis said of the program. “This
heightened interest in cross-Atlantic collaboration has
been met with great receptivity in Houston.”

In announcing
the new collaboration, Sainsbury said the Texas program
is part of a global effort by Britain to increase both basic
funding for scientific research and the number of overseas
collaborations between British and foreign researchers.

“Modern
science cannot thrive in isolation — the internationalization
of research means that technology developments are now global
in nature,” Sainsbury said. “No one country has
the monopoly on scientific expertise nor does any one government
have the resources to fund all aspects of scientific research.”

Sainsbury noted
that the United Kingdom already is active in pursuing collaborative
research in Texas, having worked with the University of
Texas Medical Branch on telemedicine programs, with M.D.
Anderson on cancer research and with NASA on a variety of
programs.

A key element
of the British plan involves creating new incentives for
universities and research institutes to work closely with
industry. Sainsbury said Britain’s universities created
199 spin-off firms in 2000, up from just 70 the previous
year.

“Our ambition
is to become the partner of choice for international scientific
and business collaboration,” he said.