Q&A: Prof Claire Eyers and Dr Neill Liptrott appointed to Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership Health and Life Sciences board
In February the Chair of the Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Health and Life Sciences sub-board; Peter Timmons confirmed the appointment of Professor Claire Eyers and Dr Neill Liptrott; both from the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology within the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences. We caught up with Claire and Neill to hear more about their new LCR LEP roles.
Q. Is this a pivotal moment to be joining the LCR LEP Board?
“Although there are a number of challenges for the local and the national health economy in terms of how we manage our new and existing European and global partnerships, this is a key time to work together across the University and the City’ says Claire. “It is important that we bring together expertise from all Institutes and Centres of Excellence within the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, as well as researchers in the other two faculties and our academic, clinical and industry partners with whom we already collaborate on various national and international research initiatives”
Neill agrees “Our connection with the LEP will be one of the fundamental elements of the transformation of our health and life sciences research - post-Covid and post-Brexit - into real-world therapies and improvements in the health of the region. It will also help us to develop and retain the next generation of scientists here at Liverpool.”
Q. What most excites you about being a member of the LEP Health and Life Sciences board?
“There’s a really exciting mix of people from industry and academia on the LEP board” says Neill, “They all have the same ambitions around health improvements in the region and economic growth in the life sciences sector. We’re all very motivated to have those key conversations between us as innovators and potential partners in local industries and consortiums in the area, the NHS, the Medicine Discovery Catapult and of course the 160m Infection Innovation Consortium (iiCON) with whom I’ve already been working since February 2021.”
“That’s true” agrees Claire, “Knowledge exchange is a key performance indicator for us and should be for all universities. It encourages scientists to work with the community and to have real impacts on the health and economy of the region. As part of this, our discussions will likely be guided by the UK Governments Health and Life Sciences agenda, published last November.
Q. Why do you think it's so important for the University to be connected with the LEP?
“We sometimes struggle with recognising and maximising on the critical mass we have in Liverpool and in the North West in general. When there are opportunities for cross-fertilisation and engagement, it really helps when there is a specific contact to have these conversations with, to share information with relevant people in other organisations in the sector.” explains Claire.
“And at the same time” adds Neill, “Among our greatest USPs (unique selling points) and one of our strongest assets is we’re very open, welcoming and multi-cultural as a city, we have great connections around the world and the community has shown that it can really rally round when we need to, as shown during our phenomenal response to Covid19 last year.
We have a depth of knowledge of the health challenges, the backgrounds and we’re listening to the patient perspectives. The opportunities for knowledge exchange are already there.”
Claire agrees; “We’re very much a civic university so to be able to link with local government, we’ll be able to use our collective insight to inform and drive those vital initiatives and policy changes for the benefit of the local and national population.”
Q. Do you know what your role on the LEP Board will entail?
“We meet several times a year with the next meeting being in March so, as the most diverse research-intensive university in the area, we’ll be in a great position to support significant new global initiatives in health and life sciences, and also expand those that have already been created such as the Pandemic Institute.” Claire explains.
She continues: “in addition to addressing current and working to predict future pandemics, we’re also focused on developing and training our scientists of the future. As a region, and as a University, we are also actively engaged in developing and testing therapeutics, a great example of which is our involvement in the AGILE clinical trial platform response in 2020 to address Covid19, utilising the wealth of ‘oven-ready’ projects we already had in the pipeline.”
“Absolutely” says Neill “Liverpool is also great at developing ‘blue sky’ research ideas and we are actively working to translate this for societal benefit. Now that we’re emerging from the pandemic, we can really play to our strengths and make the most of those opportunities; having those vital conversations and share intelligence and links with the LEP board to translate our research into those game-changing therapeutics and diagnostics to fight and prevent disease locally, nationally and globally.”
Professor Claire Eyers is Associate Pro Vice Chancellor (Research & Impact), and Director for the Centre for Proteome Research.
Dr Neill Liptrott, is a Reader at the University as well as being the coordinator for the Nanotherapeutics Hub at the Centre of Excellence for Long-acting Therapeutics.
The LCR LEP Health and Life Science Sub-Board aims to provide access to the extensive knowledge and expertise in the Health and Life Sciences sectors in local industry, the NHS and universities across the City Region.