From other shades hath weand my wandring mynde.
Tell me, what wants me here, to worke delyte?
Earlier this week we celebrated two places in Cambridge, the 40 year old Cambridge Science Park and the brand new Hauser Forum. Both are intended to improve the connection between the University of Cambridge and businesses, to ensure societal benefit from the research that is concentrated here. The great and good who acted on the 1969 Mott Report were there in large numbers, and at one point I found myself presented the Chancellor and trying to explain briefly who was involved in the Hi Tech industry cluster. It was difficult!
The end of the week was occupied with meetings between some of our members and incoming corporate technology scouts from Finmeccanica, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, and Unilever. Many more meetings organized for Philips, Shell, and SSL International had to be postponed because their representatives were unable to fly in. Our visitors wanted to find people who can harvest energy to reduce the weight and environmental impact of mobile devices, detect single molecules without amplification, give biofeedback to improve quality of life, make new cooling materials and dozens of other applications. I sat in on one meeting as the academic pulled up paper after paper from Nature illustrating the new effects that they had achieved, and explained the benefits for the scout's business. Our guests were clearly happy with the novelty and application of the new contacts they had found here.
Over the last 40 years Trinity College has given a home to many native and overseas businesses keen to participate in this region, setting a pattern for Science Parks across the country. I hope that in 40 years the Hauser Forum will be able to count with as many success stories and imitators - and that it will still be as difficult to summarise the diversity and ingenuity of the Hi Tech cluster here!
Comments