16th July 2019
Beijing
I remember learning in history classes how the invention of the steam engine brought the world to the industrialisation of modern civilisation. But to think that I am witnessing another historic age where technologies drive the fourth Industrial Revolution. The fourth IR so far has been about how technologies are changing our lives. If you […]
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18th June 2019
Beijing, China
Spring is an important season for farmers as it is a season that they start to sow and hope for a bumper harvest in autumn; it is also the season for agricultural production which helps to maintain the stability of economic development. This spring saw the kick-off of our Newton Fund UK-China Agri-tech Challenges projects. […]
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31st July 2018
Shanghai
The film “Dying to Survive” is now very popular in China. It is based on the true story of a Chinese leukaemia patient who smuggled cheap cancer drugs between India and China for himself, and 1,000 other cancer sufferers. He was arrested in 2015 and surprisingly was released after thousands of Chinese leukaemia sufferers signed […]
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28th September 2017
Beijing, China
Fibre optic cables with acoustic sensing that can be laid alongside railways or oil and gas pipelines to detect faults or security threats; lasers that can detect different types of gases and pollutants with very high precision; sensors that measure water loss across the skin barrier that can be used in cosmetics or diagnostics; sensors […]
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28th August 2017
Beijing, China
I keep saying it, but I can’t believe how fast the past four years has gone. It’s been a non-stop whirlwind but it’s been a great pleasure to lead the UK’s science and innovation relationship with China during these exciting times. When I started the Newton Fund didn’t exist and now it stands at £360m […]
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14th December 2016
Shanghai
It was just over sixty years ago that radio telescopes across England discovered a series of mysterious meteorites entering the Earth’s orbit. A leading scientist from the British Rocket Group was sent to investigate and he was shocked to discover these meteorites were part of an alien life form, a life form that emitted a […]
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9th December 2016
Shanghai
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR for short) could be the biggest killer you’ve never heard of. Last year an estimated 700,000 people around the world died from AMR. And this figure is increasing rapidly. If left unchecked, deaths will increase to 10 million per year by 2050. To put that in context, 8.2 million people globally died […]
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30th September 2016
Beijing, China
If I had to sum up the work of SIN China over the past couple of weeks in one word, it would be ‘monumental’ – referring to both the scale of the programme we ran, and the scale of the opportunity it demonstrated for the UK to work with China on innovation. The UK was […]
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9th August 2016
Beijing, China
Last week we had the honour of hosting Sir Andre Geim, UK Nobel laureate, at the Embassy for a press session with Chinese media. As you may know, Andre Geim is the University of Manchester professor famous for winning the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Konstantin Novoselov for his work on graphene, the […]
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13th July 2016
Beijing, China
What are the best models for universities and industry to work together to drive innovation? And how can they work together successfully across borders? These were some of the questions addressed by the China-UK Symposium on Innovation Driven Development with Business-University Collaboration that I and other SIN colleagues attended in Beijing last week. The Symposium […]
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