Science@Huddersfield

Steve Bentley: On today's Science @ Huddersfield, I catch up with Dr Tim Gabriel. He spent some time last week down in London as a guest of the prime minister, Tony Blair.

Tim Gabriel: As you know, the other week was Science Week, and science week is a bit of a celebration about the different types of science and engineering that go on in this country, so a lot of people attend a lot of events that have been organised by up and coming scientists, by science communicators, bydifferent organisations such as the BA, EPSRC, or the Royal Institution, and it's really there just to bring science and engineering to the forefront and make people stand up and be aware of how it affects their lives basically.

Alongside this, Tony Blair and Downing Street, they actually organised a special reception to celebrate the fact that there are a number of different science communicators and science promotors around the country who are doing their best to really push science and get it into the forefront and just to make sure that it has a reasonable profile by comparison to other different areas and different subjects within the country.

I had the opportunity to speak to the prime minister - or Tone as we like to call him at my house now - and I've got to admit if you look at the pictures on the website you'll see that Tony is fully engrossed in what I was discussing. And I think that maybe in the long run he won't be coming to Huddersfield University to do a chemistry degree. That was one of my questions, that it would be nice if we did see him here trying to support our students - it's going to get a lot of publicity but it would have been nice if we could have had a figure like that saying that chemistry really is an interesting degree course and you know, look at me, I'm the prime minister, look at me doing chemistry - that's what we were looking for, but unfortunately I think even though he's not going to be as busy as he was before I think he's got a few other things in the pipeline. It was quite an interesting event because for us it was nice to be recognised just to say that we were up and coming scientists or up and coming science communicators, and we had the opportunity to meet others as well so it was fairly good networking experience for a lot of us, it's not often that you get so many like-minded scientists and engineers within one room who are there to relax and to just enjoy the opportunity to speak with each other about the kind of projects they've been working on, where they're going and how they see science communication going.

We were also lucky enough to be in the presence of many major science celebrities in the country. You might know Robert Winstone, Jon Tickle - I mean he had he girls all around him - also people like Ben Fogle, Cathy Sykes, Carol Vorderman, the numbers wizard on Countdown. So we were all rubbing shoulders and sharing our experiences effectively as science communicators in the 21st century.

SB: So what's the message for Science going forward, would science be a good career for people to think about?

TG: I think science as a career obviously depends on the individual, but as far as people studying it and getting a lot out of it, I think it's an amazing subject and an amazing choice to be able to make. It's understandable that you're talking about a lot of hard work and a lot of perserverance as well, but as far as students go they'd be far pushed to find a degree course or at least a degree course area that encompasses such a different number of skills. So numeracy, also analytical skills. With our course at Huddersfield University especially, you are open to taking on a lot of different things such as presenting your work, being very efficient on computers, it incorporates a lot of mathematics as well. So at the end of the course - especially including the year in industry which is key feature for a lot of our students because a lot of them really do want to go and work in the chemical industry afterwards - for our students it means that they become really well rounded graduates by comparison with some of the other degree courses that are possible today.

SB: And working with industry is one of the big things that you're involved in?

TG: My role at the University as academic/industrial lecturer is split into three different areas. One is my teaching, there is also my link with science communication, promoting science to the general public and also to young people. And finally my link with industry and trying to commicate our science that we do here to the greater public and within that the area of industry as well. There is a thriving chemical industry within England and more importantly within Huddersfield at the moment, and it's my job to go out there and find interesting and also new ways of working with all these different companies. So part of my job is working with industry and part of this role also goes alongside events organisation.

So at the moment, Huddersfield University is one of eight different universities in the north of England which is working with The Northern Way, and there's an initiative which is trying to promote professional excellence, and it's all about training for people already working within the industry. We're looking at trying to develop new short courses and we're trying to push these out to different industries within the country.

The event that we're organising is really to try to bring that to the forefront of the people within the area and to say that we have a number of different courses which are available to industry and we'd like you to take these up and see how they can benefit your area of science. The event is called the Conference for Scientific Investigation or CSI for short, and it really brings together two very important areas of science, forensic science which is very important and receives a lot of coverage now, and it is very important to our livelihoods and if affects each and every one of us. And nanotechnology which encompasses biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and all the science areas, but it's becoming one of the most important areas of science if not the important area of science today. So this conference will cover some of these different areas and we'll also be there to promote some our specialities and expertise within that area at Huddersfield University.

SB: And that's an event that we're encouraging local businesses to come along to?

TG: It's free admission to everybody, and really our doors are open to anyone from industry who would like to come along and learn a little bit more about forensic science and nanotechnology and the ways we can support your industrial needs. The event is going to be held at Huddersfield University between 6.00 and 8.30pm on the 29th March and we're encouraging anyone just to come in and enjoy the information and expertise that we have at the University here.

The speakers include David Dyson who is a firearms consultant, and Bob Ardrey who is a consultant to the Forensic Science Service, and a number of other people who are going to discuss things such as ballistics associated with nano technology, and myself, I will be talking about nanotechnology as well.

SB: And you can get more information about the conference by emailing business@hud.ac.uk. If you have any feedback about the podcast the address is science@hud.ac.uk and you can get the RSS feed at www.hud.ac.uk/sas and there is information about the conference there as well. From me Steve Bentley, my guest Tim Gabriel and everyone here at the University of Huddersfield - bye for now, we'll talk to you next time.