Inaugural lecture

Last week, I delivered my inaugural lecture here at Brighton. It was a decade ago when I first delivered it, soon after being promoted to Professoriate. So, when I accepted the invitation at Brighton, I thought I could just update my slides from the first inaugural – easy!  But, when I sat down to look through them, I realised that so much has happened that I needed to tell my story differently.  And, yes, in my view, inaugural lectures are a story – a story about you, your journey, your achievements, your area of research and all the ups and downs along the way.  I feel very strongly that these lectures must give a flavour of your intellectual activity and research, but that’s only one element.

To start with, you need to make sure the talk is accessible to all, and I mean all. In this respect, these lectures are unique: on which other occasion would anyone be delivering a lecture where the audience includes family, friends, your wider university community, your past and present students, your research collaborators, school children and general public?

In many ways, I am lucky as my research area of ‘Allergies’ is something that almost everyone has heard of. When I sat down to tell the story of my research career and my journey, my first compilation of slides numbered 246!!!  After some severe weeding, I managed to get this down to 92 slides to deliver in 50 minutes …… and I managed it in 55.

I was extremely pleased to see colleagues from every school at the University and my UEB colleagues in the audience, together with colleagues from the University of Sussex, local college students and members of the general public who wanted to know more about allergies.

What I had not realised, and certainly not appreciated, was that colleagues across the University did not know about my research career. I was promoted to the Professoriate at an institution that I had worked at for number of years so, when I delivered my first inaugural lecture, the campus community knew of my work.  This was not the case here, so the reactions of colleagues from Brighton was very different and I was touched by colleagues from the School of Art, who were there in really good numbers, who all said how much they enjoyed it.  An established Professor from the Business School, who I have become quite fond of as an intellectual powerhouse, put an interesting question to me after the lecture.  He asked why, with my research career to date, did I decide to become a PVC?  An interesting question, but, so far, I have not really thought these are competing agendas.  Through a fantastic team of students and collaborators, I can carry on my research and, through my role as a PVC Research and Enterprise, I want to make a difference to researchers across the University across all disciplines or areas.  These are part of the same agenda.  I must admit though, I am very choosy about which research projects I take on these days.

I was most touched by Kasia, a Fine Art undergraduate student with multiple food allergies, who came to speak to me afterwards to say that some my work on allergen characterisation and food labelling has directly impacted her life and she wanted to thank me in person. How special is this?  She then asked me if I would sit for her as she would want to do my portrait! To which I said I would be delighted.  I know I will cherish this painting.

As a result of my inaugural and the contact that individuals who attended made afterwards, I have now agreed to do a session at Brighton Café Scientifique and will be visiting Allergy Therapeutics in Worthing to explore potential collaborations.

Above all, as I prepared the lecture and reflected on all the wonderful people I have collaborated with on research over the years, it provided me with an opportunity to publically thank and acknowledge them and to celebrate our shared successes.  I certainly would not have been able to deliver this lecture without their work.

So, despite the initial apprehension about a second inaugural, I am very pleased that I did it.

The Association for Science Education (ASE) can trace its origins back to 1900.  ASE is the professional body for all those involved in science education and is the largest subject association in the UK.  ASE membership caters for secondary and primary school teachers and technicians. It promotes improvements in science education and education in general, specifically through advice and support for teachers.  The ASE has worked closely with the University throughout its history.  The current President of the ASE is Dannielle George, Professor of Microwave and Communications Systems, University of Manchester, who took the reins from Sir David Bell (VC, University of Reading) in 2016.  The ASE runs an excellent programme of science Continuing Professional Development for teachers and technicians, from TeachMeets (informal events for local teachers to share their innovative teaching ideas) to national conferences.

The ASE journal ‘School Science Review’ (produced three times a year) is circulated to all secondary school science teachers who are members of the ASE (which is pretty much all of them).  It is also sent to university libraries and education centres and is read worldwide.  The September 2017 issue was on the theme of ‘Public Understanding of Science’ which covered subjects such as fake science, popular science and how to teach students complex concepts.  I was extremely pleased to see 8 of the 14 articles in this special issue were by scientists from the University of Brighton and our School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences (PABS) was featured extensively.  There was an excellent article (We are all mutants) by Professor Timson, Head of PABS, which I am sure every A-Level biology teacher covering genetic mutation will find extremely informative and helpful in conveying this complex area.  Professor Sosabowski, Dr Olivier and Seija Maata wrote about natural products and they even outlined 2 experiments that are suitable for A-Level chemistry.  Dr Scutt and Dr Allen had written an article about using simulation to facilitate understanding of medicines.  Dr Patel and Dr Ingram, together with two of our MPharm students (Simon Crane and Alan Mokree) and Marion Curdy, a Learning Technologies Advisor, shared the concept of mini lectures to support and enhance traditional face-face lectures for undergraduate students.

Jorj Kowszn from the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics provided a fascinating article, ‘The Village Election’, which was based on his introductory lecture to a third year undergraduate course on the Mathematics of Social Choice.

My favourite article was one with an extremely catchy title – ‘Scientific U-turns: eight occasions when science changed its mind’ – by Professor Sosabowski and Professor Guard.  It gave some really interesting examples but, having carefully followed the evidence base for some of the examples such as MMR and Autism, a better title could have been: ‘Scientific U-turns: eight occasions when science provided more robust evidence’.  But I admit that’s not that catchy!

Overall, an excellent special issue and one that secondary school science teachers across the country will benefit from.  What a good way to demonstrate the reach of our efforts in the public understanding of science.  Thank you to all those who contributed!