- PHOTO: YEN MENG JIIN
'I agree with the 'School of George Porter' - there are only two types of research: applied research and not-yet-applied research . . . there are many who can undertake the applied area of research but universities are one of the few places where there has to be a commitment to basic research.'
FOR an institution of its stature, the University of Cambridge has a remarkably short and simple mission statement, its vice-chancellor, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, points out.
"It says to serve society, through teaching, learning and research at the highest international standards; that's it, that's our mission statement. So maintaining the highest international standards in those domains and being able to ensure that that translates into being able to help society at large - and by 'society', the biggest change for the university of 800 years is that it's moved away from Cambridge or the UK to now global society as we are increasingly a global village - it's a big challenge. But these are all elements that I think the university can rise to."
A doctor by training, the Polish-Welsh immunologist was head of UK's Medical Research Council before he became Cambridge's 345th vice-chancellor in October 2010, succeeding anthropologist Alison Richard. He's also had a pioneering role in the development of a cervical cancer vaccine and is, since October 2008, a member of Singapore's Biomedical Sciences International Advisory Council.
Given his professional background - and Cambridge's track record - it's no surprise that maintaining research standards is a particular focus of the university's efforts.
"We are ensuring that we will be increasing the number of postgraduate students, we are spending a lot of time and effort building up capital infrastructure to make sure that we have facilities that are absolutely world-class in Cambridge, to attract the very best staff that we can from around the world, and then we're developing a major international policy whereby the university is engaging with other countries such as Singapore, to ensure that we can work in collaboration with top institutions, particularly around the research and postgraduate agendas."
And, with him, Cambridge's mission aims have now also a distinct third-world angle. "I also believe that it is important for universities such as Cambridge and those in the top echelon of global universities to go beyond just the local perspective, or even a national perspective, but to consider very hard how we contribute to supporting those in countries that are less well off than ourselves, and for me that actually means how developed countries (can help) in the developing world; what can we do to be able to get countries to understand that having a good university is very important for them being able to develop the manpower they will need for tomorrow. So these are all major and important directions for us."
Cambridge has, for example, a wide-ranging and long-term strategy of engagement with African universities. The Cambridge-Africa Programme aims to strengthen Africa's own capacity for a sustainable research culture by supporting the training of African doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, with initiatives across the social sciences and humanities, engineering, biological and health sciences.
To be sure, "not all universities are in a position to be able to step out and to work with universities in developing countries, it's not something for every university to do", the affable, soft-spoken 62-year old makes clear. "But we think it is a very important dimension for the University of Cambridge to be seen to be having that global involvement and recognising that there are societies that need that help and support. And if we can begin to help other countries develop their own universities . . . it's not the idea that Cambridge will be there for them but we want to work always in partnership with universities in other countries to see what we can do to help support, either engage in joint research activities or even helping in some poorer countries to develop the concept of a university, to get the country to understand why having a university there is really important."
In more ways than one, universities hold the key to economic growth, he says. Indeed, their contribution is so significant precisely because their primary objective isn't economic, he believes.
Take the Cambridge Phenomenon that arose out of the university's applied research.
"In the 1960s what happened was that two Cambridge academics thought it would be a good idea if ideas coming out of Cambridge University could actually be taken forward and deliver products in the future. What this began to foster was a spirit of entrepreneurship within the university in such a way that academics would often create their own companies in addition to the university. And the university took a very important stance - that it wasn't going to try to dominate those individuals but to give them the freedom to operate in that entrepreneurial way.
"What's happened is that a whole cluster has built up around Cambridge. Now it started off by many of the companies coming directly from university ideas but increasingly the whole community has developed a momentum of its own. So at the last count, about 1,500 companies have been created. Now that might not sound much but you have to remember that Cambridge is a very small city, it's only 100,000 people and the whole area around Cambridge is 600,000 at the most, about one per cent of the UK population. And these 1,500 companies have created 58,000 jobs in that community, and now there are nine of those companies valued at over US$1 billion and two are valued at US$10 billion or more. So these have become very engaged locally as well and work with us, but it's also attracted major companies to come in - like Microsoft, like AstraZeneca who's just announced that they're moving their global headquarters to Cambridge. So these are all very important developments for us.
"And again, we don't try to dictate what they should do, we allow this system to develop organically. But it's a very successful system indeed, so much so that it's often called, particularly in Europe, Silicon Fen, rather than Silicon Valley, in terms of the success of start-up companies that are built around the university. So this is a very important way in which we also believe we help society, by making sure discoveries made in the universities very quickly get into potential products."
Other research centres elsewhere that seek to replicate the Cambridge Phenomenon should "look at Cambridge, see what they can learn from our model but then develop their own models because what we're doing has worked in the Cambridge area, it might not work in every other setting because of regulations and changes", he says. "I'm very proud that we're part and parcel of this phenomenon, and we think that it gives our academics a real opportunity to make sure that they can exploit discoveries and be free to do so."
Dr Borysiewicz, who was knighted in 2001 for his research on vaccines, believes that universities are the last great integrators of research activity across many different sources and disciplines. He would argue against the view, for instance, that universities focus only on basic, blue-skies research and leave "applied" research and innovation to private sector R&D labs.
"I agree with the 'School of George Porter' (the late Nobel laureate) - there are only two types of research: applied research and not-yet-applied research. You know, I'd argue the only reason string theory in mathematics is not yet applied is because we are not yet clever enough to apply it; in time somebody will find applications for it. So there is this component of not-yet-applied or basic, call it what you will, I think it is very important that universities sustain this type of research, because there are many who can undertake the applied area of research but universities are one of the few places where there has to be a commitment to basic research.
"I'm also a great believer that basic research gives rise to the applied research of tomorrow, and the more fundamental the discovery from the basic end, the more valuable that is in terms of translation at the end of the day. So we maintain an absolute freedom for academics to choose the type of research they do, we don't dictate to them what they should be doing, we don't scrutinise them every five minutes to see how many papers they publish, we give them the freedom and particularly the time to pursue research into very difficult questions. For some, that's very basic research; for others, it's about global challenges like food security, but both types of research are accommodated within the university. But we do feel very strongly that the basic component, the fundamental research, has always got to have a very special place in the university, because fundamentally that is where those discoveries result in really big advances in the future."
His own work in the early 1990s at the University of Wales where he led a research team that conducted clinical trials for a therapeutic vaccine for human papillomavirus, a cause of cervical cancer, is a case in point.
"We were looking at a very fundamental level. What was driving us was initially not the development of a vaccine but actually beginning to understand how does an infection that persists in some women for 10 or more years, give rise to the changes and why is it the immune system fails to control it in some women whereas most other infected women have cleared the virus entirely easily. So, work coming from quite a fundamental question can result in quite major developments on the applied end as well."
While he has moved on from being a medical researcher, he has kept up his interest in immunology.
"Obviously, one can only do so by reading, I don't have a research group at the present time, but where I have managed to keep my interests external to the university has been in the importance of the development of drugs and treatments for neglected tropical diseases. The period of time I spent working in West Africa (in the 1980s) was very formative for me, to begin to understand that there is a dearth of medications for neglected diseases, mostly worm and parasite infections that occur throughout Africa. We're not going to be able to develop drugs easily for those because there isn't a market for them; the countries where these diseases are prevalent will never be able to afford the current costs of the drugs. So I work with a foundation called the Tres Cantos Foundation, which tries to identify new drugs against these neglected diseases, working with companies and academics to make sure that if they've got good basic discoveries, it allows them to see whether a potential drug could be developed against these agents. And the other thing that I still maintain my interest in is that I'm chair of the Research Advisory Group to the (UK) Department for International Development, so it's again very much with the developing world, the whole concept of how we engage with supporting work in those countries to basically make life better for them."
Cambridge's de facto chief executive tells BT that he's been described as probably one of the biggest sceptics of global university rankings. "These league tables that appear around the world, I don't pay any attention to them, by and large. The reason being, every league table is different, they all have different weightings, different ratings; you know, you're up in one, down in another, I mean, what does it mean? There is, however, something which I do find gratifying - that ever since league tables were invented, Cambridge has been amongst the top half dozen universities around the world, and it's that consistency that matters. People will swap the odd place here or there, I don't get worked up about it. But the very fact that over 15, 20 years, we're seen to be among the top universities in the world - yup, that is important. And it's important because our students tell us it's important to them. And it's something that we aspire to in our mission statement - that we want to hit the highest international standards, so it's something that therefore does matter from that broader perspective. But individual league tables . . . you know, you can't be dissuaded from your path by what's going on in league tables. You set a direction for the long term - and universities have to be places where you take a very long-term view; you're educating students today, they will not achieve their true fruition, in an academic sense or in industry or elsewhere, for another 20 years. The investment is a very long-term investment, and one of the biggest challenges is - how do you make sure that you plan long-term but can also deliver in the short term?"
Dr Borysiewicz - who has a broad range of interests, from archaeology and military history to painting - has described his Cambridge job as "the most brilliant job in the world".
"I still think it is," he tells BT. "I have a great love of being in the university setting - there's nothing quite as invigorating as waking up on a Monday morning and knowing that there are 12,000 students there, so many staff, postgrads, postdocs . . . and you're trying to create an environment that allows them to thrive. We have about 1,400 academic staff, last year alone they published 12,000 publications. It's an extraordinary concentration of brainpower and just drive to make sure that we can tackle the world's biggest problems and engage with us. It's why there's no problem coming in at 9 o'clock every morning, it's always an exciting place to be around."
LESZEK BORYSIEWICZ
Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge
1951 Born in Cardiff, Wales.
Attends Cardiff High School, then Welsh National School of Medicine
1977 Leaves Cardiff to pursue postdoctoral research in London
1979-1980 Registrar, Dept of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital
1980-1986 Joins Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, initially as MRC clinical training fellow; later becomes Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer
1987-1988 Wellcome Trust Senior Lecturer in Infectious Diseases, Addenbrooke's Hospital,Cambridge
1988-1991 Lecturer in Medicine, University of Cambridge
1991-2001 Professor of Medicine, University of Wales College of Medicine
2001-2004 Principal, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London
2004-2007 Deputy Rector, Imperial College, London
2007-2010 Chief Executive, UK's Medical Research Council
Since October 2010 Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge
Others:
2001 - Knighted for services to medical research and education
October 2008 - Appointed to Singapore's Biomedical Sciences International Advisory Council
