Risk & Opportunities - Heriot Watt University Industry Day

HWU is ‘distinctly ambitious’ and held it first university-wide Industry Day on 20th January under the theme of Risk & Opportunities. The day explored innovative solutions to manage risk effectively, both predicting risk and uncertainty, and mitigating the consequences of unexpected events. Focus themes were on climate change, environment and energy, so not the biomedical sciences that are commonly thought-of as life sciences, but the life sciences understanding the environment to understand and mitigate risk.
It’s understood that biomedical sciences is a highly-regulated sector, but it’s far from unique in that regard. Gordon Mcgregor from Scottish Power outlined the challenges it faces generating energy from different sources so that it meets regulated (and legislated) demands to reduce carbon production in response to more ambitious targets in seemingly shorter times.
In a knowledge-exchange message Prof Paul Jowitt from SISTECH compared blog and flog, sharing and selling, and showing a quadrant graph with Nils Bohr-interested in how it works, less so in what it does; Thomas Edison interested in what it does, and less so in how it works; and Loius Pasteur – interested in how it works and what it does (insert your own examples). The caution was to watch out for Rae (or RAE) who sits in the not how it works, not what it does quadrant. Paul also entertainingly illustrated the different ways to generate value from the same starting material – a bag of groceries. So variously, use them at home, use them as ingredients to make higher value meals in a restaurant, paint a picture of them and flog it for millions of pounds. There are various ways to usefully apply the same resource.
Lastly, David Evans from Arup mentioned that the inspiration for improvements to Cardiff’s eastern sewers came from biomimicry, or more-precisely consideration of poikilotherms and homeotherms sharing a beach on a sunny day. The latter, of course, regulates it’s own temperature rather than being responsive to the environment, and this lead to a management systems that regulates water-flow responsively to environmental conditions.
Thanks to HWU for the opportunity to join its Industry Day – it was worth the risk.

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