On how research can change the world

19 July 2010

By Andy Humphrey

I’ve written before about how research can sometimes feel like a lonely and isolated profession. Even in the best inter-disciplinary, collaborative projects, there can still be weeks at a time when the researcher is stuck on their own in a lab or gazing at a computer screen, trying to make sense of experiments that don’t work or data that doesn’t allow for coherent analysis.

It’s at times like this that my enthusiasm for research can start to flag a bit. I came into research, after all, wanting to do my bit to make the world a little better. In these isolationist phases, it can be easy for me to lose sight of the bigger picture, become despondent that my days at the lab bench are never going to change anything. These are the times when it helps to remember that as a researcher I’m part of an international, cross-cultural community all working towards the same goals. In being part of that network – a network that transcends political, religious and ethnic divides – my presence alone is helping to break down barriers that so often lead to conflict, exploitation or prejudice.

The point was brought home to me forcefully by a recent article on the ResearchProfessional web resource. In it David Clary, the chief scientific advisor to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, summarised a series of unique cross-cultural scientific projects that may just be doing a little bit for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. Among these projects was the SESAME synchrotron near Amman, Jordan, currently being built and staffed with money and resources from (amongst others) Israel, Pakistan, Iran and the Palestinian Authority – not states which you’d normally think to describe using the word “co-operation”. The UK has played its part in the development of SESAME, with both financial aid and the personal expertise of British professors who sit on the scientific committee.

Also mentioned in Prof. Clary’s article was the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia near Jeddah. For a new university, KAUST has attracted a vast amount of international funding and has gone out of its way to recruit research leaders and staff, not just from Islamic countries, but from everywhere around the world where research excellence thrives. Leading US scientists have been head-hunted to establish KAUST in the premier league of research universities. Moreover, this is one of the few establishments in Saudi Arabia where men and women work together as equals.

The history of research collaboration across the cultural divide goes back a long way. One immediately thinks of the Cold War, and CERN, as a shining example. But it’s a reality in our universities today. In the last few years I’ve worked alongside scientists from France, Portugal, Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, China, Poland, Romania, India, Germany, Peru and the US. In an era when the news agenda seems to be dominated by cross-cultural suspicion, it is heartening to remember that researchers in the UK are part of a proud academic tradition. By working willingly together we ARE doing our own little bit to change the world.