Innogen Alumni, a blog post by Dave Wield

In late February and early March 2025, I had the pleasure of attending not one, but two, Innogen-related Inaugural Lectures. Inaugural lectures are given by newly appointed Full Professors: they are open and public lectures that aim to illuminate the key interests and drivers of the new professor. In short, what they profess.

Each inaugural focused on key concerns of Innogen. Professor Niki Vermeulen in Edinburgh called her lecture ‘A Manifesto for Collaboration’. Her argument was that, although promotion in academia is based to a large extent on individual achievement, most research that has the biggest impact is based on collaborative efforts. She quoted another Innogen alumnus, James Smith, to say ‘the single individual can go fast, but the collective goes far’. Her talk was peppered with examples of her own research that had succeeded because of interdisciplinary collaboration. Niki joined Innogen as soon as she arrived in Edinburgh and has been on its Management Committee for many years. She is a massive advocate for public STS and, on the side, set up the Curious Edinburgh website that has guided many thousands of visitors through Edinburgh’s historical scientific, technological and industrial sites. 

The title of Professor Julius Mugwagwa’s lecture at University College London was ‘Localisation matters: a journey with the life sciences, innovation and public policy’. Julius sketched his twenty-year journey from his beginnings as a Zimbabwean natural scientist in biotechnology to his becoming an interdisciplinary social scientist in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP) department at UCL. Much of this transformation took place in Innogen at the Open University, after Julius arrived to do his PhD and then postdoc research. He paid tribute to the support he had got through a bursary system set up by Innogen and the Open University to support African students to do PhDs. Around ten bursaries were awarded and the alumni are now working in a wide range of important positions. Niki Vermeulen’s Head of Department, Geoff Banda, had one of these OU bursaries. Ann Kingiri is Research Director of the African Centre for Technology Strategy in Nairobi and a leader in the continent-wide Africa-lics consortium. As for impact, Joanna Chataway, another Innogen member, introduced Julius to his Inaugural as ‘highly collaborative, inclusive and patiently effective in the backrooms where deals are done’. 

Innogen has had long term impact from its extensive networks of research collaboration. But we do not have the means to track most of it. Impact can take decades. One good example is that the UK government Sure Start programme received quite a critical evaluation report after just a few years. That report was probably one reason why funding was first cut and then the whole programme destroyed by the Coalition government of 2010-15. But a recent report showed just how much positive impact it has had on poverty, sadly for just one generation of children born 20-25 years ago.

Speaking with Joyce Tait the other week, we wondered why the research councils didn’t evaluate the impact of their big funding activities after the first few years. The ESRC investment in Genomics, three ESRC centres and a network, must have been well over £25 million in the period 2002-2014. In the case of Innogen, the last call for data came after five years, I think. 

I guess a full evaluation would take up far too much time and might only lead to a fat report. And who would read it anyway. Each centre would need to find someone with enough institutional memory. Contacting people who, for sure would have travelled far, would be a nightmare. Pulling together the publication data would be the easy part of the process. How to decide whether the research directly led to impact after more than a decade? We probably should let ‘sleeping dogs lie’!

Innogen, now an Institute, has fairly good data, mind you. It publishes reports, has a web site, and a presence in both of its constituent universities, Edinburgh and the Open. During Julius’ lecture, I started thinking about Innogen alumni. Alumni careers and lives are important indicators of long term impact. First, I thought of two of the younger, early career, OU academics who so enthusiastically supported Innogen at the beginning and who are now senior leaders and hard working public intellectuals: Joanna Chataway, who directs UCL’s STEaPP department and Mariana Mazzucato, Director of UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).

I also thought about the cohort who joined Innogen in the early days as postdoc research fellows, including those who are now professors: James Smith, James Mittra, Alessandro Rosiello, Ann Bruce Cathie Lyall, Gill Haddow, Jane Calvert, and Theo Papaioannou. I’m sure I’ve missed some so please let us know if you’ve been missed out. Innogen has helped produce a large alumni cohort of emerging academics and policy-oriented leaders.

Of course, professors are not everything. I thought of our doctoral students over the first decade or so. I counted fifty from that period. Julius Mugwagwa was one of them, as were Becky Hanlin, Dinar Kale and Matt Harsh, who are now professors themselves. And there are so many more working as academics in different universities around the world in all five continents, many of whom are Innogen Associates. Nicola Marks might be the farthest flung, in the University of Wollongong, in Australia, but Becky in Johannesburg and Matt Harsh in California sit at the edges of their continents. And Shawn Harmon, a Partner in a major legal practice in Halifax, Nova Scotia, might be the most northerly in North America. 

Innogen research was designed for policy orientation, so it would be strange if there were not policy wonks as well. Others in senior policy position include Donna Messner in the Center for Medical Technology Policy in Washington DC and Ann Kingiri at the African Centre for Technology Strategy She and Becky Hanlin are major players in the Globelics Africa programme.

Given the challenging interdisciplinary nature of the research we did, and do, it is not surprising to see that Innogen Alumni work in so very many areas. Some set up their own areas, like Mariana Mazzucato in the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Others sit in formal disciplines, like politics, economics and business, law and sociology. There are many more in policy, governance and science technology innovation-policy oriented units. 

Finally, you might reasonably ask: what is Innogen doing now? Is it doing anything interesting? The answer is: a lot! And is it doing anything useful? Definitely. It is worth mentioning two recent successes. Joyce Tait is a member of the UK Government Regulatory Horizons Council, which advises on regulatory reform to support innovation. Another continuing collective endeavour concerns how to build industrial capacity in medicines arguing that health policy has consistently avoided advocating for industrial capacity, something which was a massive gap during Covid. Many alumni have been involved. Geoff Banda, in Edinburgh, Maureen Mackintosh and others in the OU, Julius Mugwagwa and Joanna Chataway at UCL, Ann Kingiri in Nairobi and Becky Hanlon in Johannesburg have all been involved in a major programme on Innovation for Cancer Care in Africa, which has just published its major findings in an open access book. 

And there’s lots more.

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