What are the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals? What are the biggest challenges in pursuing and achieving those goals? How does technology play a role? And what's the best way for government, academia, and industry to cooperate and collaborate in support of fundamental research? We will learn those answers and more in this episode with Declan Kirrane, the Chairman of the Science Summit at the United Nations General Assembly, and founder and managing director of ISC Intelligence in Science. Declan has more than 25 years of experience as a global senior advisor to governments and industry on science research, science policy and related regulation. He has been actively promoting a more significant role for science within the context of the United Nations General Assembly since 2010. This has culminated in the annual Science Summit within the context of the UN's General Assembly. The focus of the Summit is on the role and contribution of science to attain the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – or SDGs. The current edition – UNGA78 - takes place from September 12-29, and will bring together thought leaders, scientists, technologists, policymakers, philanthropists, journalists, and community leaders to increase health science and citizen collaborations to promote the importance of supporting science. And we are thrilled that Oracle will be part of the Science Summit with a few of our executives speaking and attending, including Alison Derbenwick Miller, global head and VP of Oracle for Research.

 

--------------------------------------------------------

Episode Transcript:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/researchinaction/Research_in_Action_S01_E19.mp3

 

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;29

What are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals? What are the biggest challenges in pursuing and achieving those goals? And what's the best way for government, academia and industry to cooperate and collaborate in support of basic research? We'll get the answers to all this and more on Research in Action.

 

00;00;23;02 - 00;00;49;08

Hi, and welcome back to Research and Action, brought to you by Oracle for Research. I'm Mike Stiles and today's distinguished guest is Declan Kirrane, who is the chairman of the Science Summit at the United Nations General Assembly and the founder and managing director of ISC Intelligence and Science. And we're talking to a guy with more than 25 years of experience as a global senior advisor to governments and industry on science research, science policy and regulation around science.

 

00;00;49;10 - 00;01;17;07

Declan has been promoting a bigger role for science in the context of the U.N. General Assembly since 2010, and that's led to an annual science summit that focuses on the role and contribution of science to reach the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. The current edition UNGA 78 is happening September 12th through 29th and will bring together thought leaders, scientists, technologists, policymakers, philanthropists, journalists and community leaders.

 

00;01;17;09 - 00;01;37;02

We'll talk about increasing health science and citizen collaborations and why it's important to support science overall. Now, Oracle's actually going to be part of that science summit a few of the executives will be there speaking, including Alison Derbenwick Miller, who's global head and VP of Oracle for Research. Declan, thank you so much for being with us today.

 

00;01;37;08 - 00;01;58;13

Thanks, Michael. Great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. Delighted to be here. What we want to hear all about the science summit at the U.N. General Assembly. But before we go there, tell me what got you not just into science, but science policies and your role in creating this summit? Well, first is, I suppose, the simple answer to that is happenstance.

 

00;01;58;13 - 00;02;21;10

I have to tell you, it was not planned. My primary degree is the history of art. And then I did law and probably needed a job after all of that. And then as a lot of people did in the late, late eighties, emigrated to the U.S. of A and on the basis that there was nothing going on in Ireland.

 

00;02;21;10 - 00;02;51;23

So opportunity beckoned and therefore from that worked on Wall Street and at a boutique mutual fund company. And then between one thing and another, I ended up in a in a boutique similar boutique company in Paris. And from that to Greece and from that, I got into more consulting side of things and from that started working for global multilateral bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF on a contract basis.

 

00;02;51;23 - 00;03;23;25

And then from that got more into telecoms and from that into into science coming out. And I suppose from the area of telecoms, infrastructure and data rather than, if you like, a bank scientist. And I suppose my history of art background gave me a wonderful perspective on policy, at least that's what I argue. And, and from that I got very interested and from the insights, but partly because the European Commission invited me and a couple of others to set up a dissemination service.

 

00;03;23;25 - 00;03;57;19

It's called Cordis. Cordis and the Cordis Information Service was designed by the European Commission to provide information on ongoing collaborative research and to provide information on publicly funded research opportunities in the course. The reason the European Union did that was to was to ensure that the information resulting from funding they're providing reached a very, very wide audience. So my job was to to do that and we built that out and that brought me into the area of science policy.

 

00;03;57;22 - 00;04;27;19

And I gradually began to understand the huge importance of science policy. And of course, 20 years ago science policy was not a thing, you know, it doesn't really exist in terms of policy making headlines, but it gradually came to be and as you know, it's it's part of the lexicon now. A lot of governments around the world have science policy priorities, and it's recognized as a driver for economic development and global competitiveness and driving solutions to global challenges.

 

00;04;27;19 - 00;04;51;05

So sciences is a thing, but 20 years ago it wasn't. So it's a relatively recent and I began quickly to appreciate the policy dimension of that, and that led me to work on policy that led me to understand policy mechanisms. And, you know, from my standpoint, I mean, there's no point in looking at some global challenges or many global challenges from a national perspective.

 

00;04;51;12 - 00;05;21;24

Really, it has to be global, it has to be international. That led me to engage with the United Nations. And from that, we just started to build from, as you say, from 2010, to start to build, engage with nations. And I really want to stress these were designed to be very, very simple to present not to a scientific forum, but to the U.N. for it to the mother ship, to the General Assembly, to diplomats, to policy and political leaders, and show them what science is.

 

00;05;21;24 - 00;05;43;04

And to give you a practical example, our first meeting was on biobanking. And you know, the main attention, wasn't it? What's biobanking? You see, that's exactly what we want. The want the question we wanted them to ask. And from Matt and that first mission, I think there's about 18 people in the room and we had about four or five diplomats last year at the Science summit.

 

00;05;43;06 - 00;06;07;02

We had approximately 60,000 participants. We had just under 400 sessions and we had 1600 speakers. So we've come a long way. And that really now is it's it's it's established. But we want to keep promoting. We want to keep science in the eye of the U.N. and we want to ensure that the future recognizes the contribution of science.

 

00;06;07;05 - 00;06;27;29

That's quite a journey. I think you did just about everything except science. Are you sure you weren't in the circus as well? Yeah, well, it's it's, you know, it's all true, you know, So, yeah, it's it's put a lot of it. Last 20 years has been on primarily on science. Yeah. Well in the intro I mentioned the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs.

 

00;06;27;29 - 00;06;54;00

And our listeners are pretty savvy. They probably know about those, but I'm not savvy. So what are SDGs and how do they speak to global health and humanity in the in the in the mid nineties the the United Nations. And when I say the United Nations, I mean many of the United Nations constituent entities