UK FCO Chief Scientific Adviser visiting Taiwan
皇冠体育app UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office鈥檚 Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Robin Grimes is visiting Taiwan
皇冠体育app UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office鈥檚 Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Robin Grimes is visiting Taiwan from 15-18 March to enhance bilateral links in science and technology. His high level visit comes at the end of a nine-month Technology is GREAT campaign by the British Office to promote UK innovation and technology through a series of high-level exchanges between the UK鈥檚 and Taiwan鈥檚 research institutions, businesses and academia. His three day programme includes visits to Taipei and Hsinchu.
This morning, Professor Grimes met Minister for Science and Technology Shyu Jyou-min to discuss UK-Taiwan science ties and consider ways in which they may be strengthened. This was followed by a roundtable discussion with the National Applied Research Laboratories where Professor Grimes gave an overview of the UK鈥檚 scientific research infrastructure. This was followed by a more in-depth discussion that covered the fields of high performance computing, nanotechnology and space.
This afternoon Professor Grimes, who is concurrently Professor of Materials Physics at Imperial College London in addition to his duties as Chief Scientific Adviser, delivered a science lecture, complete with demonstrations, on 鈥淟earning to Live with our Defects鈥� at Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School to an audience of more than 150 science-talented high school students to explore the world of defects in materials, defects at the atomic scale. Professor Grimes used his demonstrations and lecture to show how investigating defects can help to develop new materials with enhanced or even new properties. On 18 March, Professor Grimes will give a talk at the Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, on 鈥淎tomic Scale Simulation in the Service of Materials Performance鈥� to consider how high performance computing can add value to the development of materials. Both talks are aimed at facilitating the exchange of scientific knowledge and to promote the very best of UK education and science.
On 17 March, Professor Grimes will travel to Hsinchu Science Park for meetings with some of Taiwan鈥檚 leading companies and with hi-tech UK companies such as ARM Holdings and Oxford Instruments which have major investments in Taiwan. In the afternoon, Professor Grimes will travel to the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) for discussions on enhancing ITRI鈥檚 links with UK research institutions and for a tour of the Mechanical and Systems Research Laboratories.
On 18 March, Professor Grimes will meet Vice President-elect Chen Chien-jen to discuss areas where the UK and Taiwan could enhance research and technological collaboration over the coming years.
Professor Grimes鈥檚 visit comes at a time when the UK is making significant investments in its science infrastructure both in existing world-class institutions - four of the world鈥檚 top ten universities are in the UK - and in new facilities such as the UK Catapult Centres and the new Alan Turing Institute. 皇冠体育app British Government plans to invest 拢30.4bn in science by 2020 to further enhance the UK鈥檚 reputation for research excellence. Already with just 3.2% of the world鈥檚 R&D spend, the UK accounts for 16% of the most highly-cited research articles.