Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

taken away from the region under one of the biggest structural shake-

ups in its history as its parent council, the BBSRC, pursues the

creation of a globally competitive Diet and Health research institute. The Institute of Food Research (IFR), based in Norfolk, could be

taken away from the region under one of the biggest structural shake-

ups in its history as its parent council, the BBSRC, pursues the

creation of a globally competitive Diet and Health research institute.

Changes to IFR research and how it is governed, managed and funded

are expected as the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research

Council seeks to maximise efficiency and build an institute that will

tackle major diet-related public health issues.

The BBSRC wants to embed the IFR within a Higher Education Institute

and though the University of East Anglia in Norwich is clear

favourite, the BBSRC says that if UEA’s ambition doesn’t approach its

own then other universities may have to be considered.

If UEA is able to meet the necessary requirements, IFR will be

embedded into the university, which would mean the co-location of

staff from both institutes and shared lab space so that a larger body

of high quality research and training can be established.

If this proves successful, in the long-term there exists the

possibility that the IFR is eventually fully integrated into UEA and

run under the control of the university.

“The future lies in forging a bigger and better university

partnership and the leading contender is UEA; the IFR director has

been given a mandate to negotiate with them and see what its appetite

is for this,” said BBSRC’s head of strategic planning, Paul Burrows.

“IFR will report back in July, gauging the enthusiasm of the

university and to see what it can bring. If UEA negotiations did fall

down, Council would then weigh up pros and cons, costs and benefits.

“It’s theirs to lose. There is potential for a really good flagship

institution in a strategic area and Council is looking for UEA to

come forward and say ‘yes, we share one vision.’

“We would be concerned if UEA came back and said they’ll have just

one or two appointments, share one laboratory.

“We are looking for something more from them than just a token

gesture and after the report comes in we will see the scale of the

partnership – and partnership is the key word here. Everyone has to

bring something to the table.”

BBSRC’s plans for change were outlined following a review of IFR in

April to track the Institute’s progress since the 2005 Institute

Assessment Exercise (IAE), which revealed some concerns about the

quality of the science at IFR.

At the time the IAE observed that the IFR’s new director, Professor

David White, had just begun to implement a new five-year science

strategy which was strongly supported by the IAE’s visiting group and

would need to be revisited.

The 2007 review found that though further efforts were needed to

deliver better value for money, IFR had shown an improvement in the

overall quality of the science, conc-luding that it had enough core

expertise and capability to provide the critical mass of researchers

needed to build a leading food science research institute.

This has been embraced by the IFR who issued a statement declaring

its delight at some of the review panel findings, adding that it was

in the process of making some of the key appointments urged by the

review.

The statement added that the IFR was already undertaking useful

discussions with potential university partners having been given a

clear mandate to explore further the scope for working even more

closely with UEA.

“The closer integration of IFR with the University of East Anglia

would appear to be an obvious, though not the only, choice and

helpful discussions are underway with senior university staff and our

governing body to progress the concept,” said Prof White.

Other changes recommended by the review included installation of a

clear succession plan to minimalise the loss of key members of staff;

creation of a number of Institute fellowships and revision of the

funding process which will take the form of a small number of

independ-ently peer reviewed strategic programme grants.

Funding for IFR spin-outs should also be reviewed and the panel

recommended a strict timeline be imposed of around five years for

them to become self-funding.

It was felt that, although promising technologies existed, too many

with poor commercial prospects were being pursued.

The IFR has been asked to provide proposals in response to the review

in July, with new structural implementation exp-ected in 2009.

Currently, 215 scientists are employed at IFR.