Ian Leigh

Story overview

From very early in my career I was given opportunities to develop administrative and policy skills as well as practical scientific expertise. I rapidly became a “jack of all trades” — more politely known as a “technological generalist” — and before long I found myself doing scientific administration and programme formulation rather than working at the lab bench. For example, in the late 1980s I established the LINK programme in nanotechnology, which provided UK government support for projects undertaken jointly by industrial and academic partners. This laid the foundations for some of the work that is taking place in this field today.