Warwick HRI’s new director professor Simon Bright this week told the Journal that the newly focused organisation will put its research efforts into a broader commercial context, and to a wider audience.
Bright joined Warwick HRI from Syngenta, after an 18-year stint with the company that spanned its ICI and Zeneca years. While always involved with research, his remit was to take science with an industrial view. Applying a similar joined-up approach to science at HRI is high on his list of priorities.
“My role was to take technology and make it relevant to peoples’ needs,” said Bright, “to decide how it could be applied practically and turned into an honest penny. That is precisely what we must focus on at HRI. We need to take all of the elements and plug them into the real world. We have to look at economic, social and environmental sciences as well as biological sciences and crop protection, in order to put our work into its true context.
“There always has to be someone looking at the research projects from an end-user’s point of view, which involves looking at the entire system, excelling in all our different areas and pulling together the real expertise across the broad range.”
Bright is the first permanent director of Warwick HRI since it officially took on responsibility for running the HRI sites at Wellesbourne and Kirton. The principal UK organisation tasked with carrying out horticultural research and development (R&D) and transferring the results to industry has therefore emerged from arguably its darkest hours.
“We are certainly living in interesting times,” said Bright. “I’ve spent a lot of my time since July 1 working internally. Understandably, as there has been a lot of change with an emphasis on downsizing, there are people here who are feeling a bit battered and bruised. One of my first jobs is to ensure that we emerge from the process with a solid platform to move forward from and that we re-establish an environment in which we lift our heads and begin to chase after new opportunities for funding and new ideas.
“We can begin to have discussions again without people feeling that it might affect their jobs. It will not be an easy ride, but we have the opportunity to put things back into our own hands.
“The defensive attitude had become entrenched, but I have been encouraged by how positive people are. There are lots of ideas bubbling under the surface - all that is needed is the motivation to be more expressive and brave in our approach.”
Bright intends to introduce himself to as many of the major players in the industry as possible in the next few months, to ensure that the new messages are put across. He also wants to gauge opinions on HRI, and of the role the industry feels the organisation should be playing. “I want to meet key people in all of the various parts of horticulture we butt up against,” he said. “I invite people to bend my ear; I am a newcomer to HRI so I have a fairly un-marked card at the moment.
“Somehow, the industry needs to get its research priorities clear - to dovetail the things that it would like HRI to provide with the things that research can do. We want to have an impact across a broad range of crops. If we are creating seed germination models for one crop, why not see if we can expand them across other crops and have a bigger impact on the industry as whole?”
In-coming communication is one side of the equation; Bright is also going to analyse HRI’s external communication strategy and its effectiveness. “We have set up an Industry Liaison Committee to tell us how good we are at communicating and to decide where we should be putting our energies in order to really make an impact. I have seen some very good communication going out of here in the last month, but still some people tell me we are invisible. We want to learn from the industry as well as work with it - the entire institution, not just a few members within it, must be industry-faced.”
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