About British Scientists in Spain

I’ve blogged before about Science and Diplomacy.  For the UK, science is a real force for generating economic growth, fostering collaboration between international partners and improving living standards everywhere.

That’s why we have a network of Science and Innovation officers working in our embassies around the world, including here in Madrid: Spain is an important “science partner” for us.

Spain has real strengths in many areas:  energy, biomedical sciences and biotechnology, agriculture and food, materials, ICT and environment, including water.

It is also rapidly generating cutting-edge solutions for key sectors such as aerospace, renewables and biotechnology.

Many of these areas overlap with the UK’s own priorities.  So we have a strong common interest in working together.  And both our governments try to create interactions between science and business.  This also helps bridge the gap between scientific discoveries and commercial applications.

UK/Spain R&D collaboration is particularly strong in the health sector especially on cancer and regenerative medicine.  E also work together on energy, environment and agritech.  UK researchers have participated in 1,870 joint research collaborations with Spain involving more than €7.8 billion.

Our latest project is to establish a network of British Scientists in Spain (BSS).  We are working in collaboration with la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT) to bring together the community of British scientists working in Spain.

We hope this will help them develop links, and discover new opportunities for collaboration, with Spanish partners.

We have already created a Linked In group, British Scientists in Spain.  And for the future we plan to organise meetings to discuss points of common interest and to identify possible collaborations.

If you would like to know more take a look at this video or listen to this radio interview with the Spain SIN officer, Sara Cebrian.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via britishscientistsinspain@gmail.com.  Or contact Sara Cebrian on sara.cebrian@fco.gov.uk