Innogen is 20!

1 March 2022

As Innogen celebrates its 20th anniversary, its members reflect on the past and future impacts of the long-standing collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and The Open University on academia and real-world policy.

Founded in 2002 as the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics and now known as the Innogen Institute, the organisation’s mission is to produce high quality research to support the delivery of innovative technologies that are profitable, safe and societally useful.

Innogen’s defining themes: co-production and interdisciplinarity have encouraged innovators and researchers to re-imagine relationships between innovation, regulation and publics (Fig. 1). Over the last two decades, research by Innogen members has supported innovation-related decision making across a range of sectors and contributed to deliver the social and economic benefits of innovation in the UK and beyond. Their work emphasises the importance of proportionate and adaptive governance of innovative technologies and the role of standards and frameworks (soft law), alongside legally-based regulation (hard law) in supporting agile and responsible innovation.

Working in areas such as global health and development, food and energy security, the bioeconomy and the circular economy, Innogen is demonstrating how to improve the translation of innovative technologies in life sciences and related areas from basic scientific research to commercial application. Research and advisory initiatives cover: governance of new medical devices and genetic technologies for agriculture, aquaculture and industrial biotechnology; access to cancer treatment in LMICs; the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases in Africa; the regulation of rapid diagnostics for antimicrobial resistance; and the sustainability of food systems.

Innogen has established itself as a role model for inter-university research collaboration that has delivered the highest quality of research and supported the generation of product and process innovation that is profitable, safe, inclusive and societally useful. Building on its success, evidenced by hundreds of externally funded projects, peer reviewed publications, and media reports, the Institute is continuing its mission, offering in-depth, rigorous research and impartial, non-partisan, evidence-based advice to public policy and practice,” says Theo Papaioannou, Director of Innogen & Professor of Politics, Innovation and Development at The Open University

Figure 1. Innogen’s research focuses on the interactions between scientists/innovators, policy makers/regulators, and citizens/stakeholders to support innovative products and processes to get to the market place and succeed.

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