Microbiology Matters

The Society has been consulting members over the past year about the grand challenges and policy issues concerning microbiology. We now have our members’ views and they will be used to push microbiology up the policy agenda.

Good microbiology is vital for good policy. Antimicrobial resistance, climate change and food security are just some of the grand challenges facing policy-makers where microbiology is needed to understand the causes and to provide solutions. But to engage effectively with these challenges microbiologists need to be supported by good science policies concerning funding, regulation and sustainable careers. It is these grand challenges and cross-cutting issues that the Society’s policy team have been consulting members about over the past year, as we look to prioritise and enhance the impact of our policy work.

Over the winter months we held three highly successful policy workshops with members in Nottingham, Glasgow and London. The workshops were jointly organised with the Society for Applied Microbiology. They provided a great opportunity to hear the in-depth views of microbiologists from diverse disciplines and career backgrounds. We also carried out a survey on policy issues with Society members and received 140 responses. Since then the Policy Committee and staff have been reviewing the wealth of information and views gathered from these exercises, distilling it down into key priorities to feed into the review of the Society’s Strategy.

Chair of the Policy Committee, Professor Maggie Smith, said, “informing policy makers and the wider public about microbiology policy issues is an important part of the Society’s work. It has been great to see how engaged our membership have been with this consultation process, and we have heard some really interesting views and issues which we will be taking forward.”

Grand challenges

Microbiology underpins so many global issues, that distilling these down to priorities proved a grand challenge in itself for our workshop attendees and the Committee. Nonetheless, some clear interlinked priorities emerged concerning infectious diseases and food security (Figs 1 and 2). It was also clear that climate change and sustainability, as well as biotechnology, were important cross-cutting issues that the Society should be prioritising.

FIG. 1. KEY WORDS IDENTIFYING OUR TOP GRAND CHALLENGES FROM OUR POLICY SURVEY.

FIG. 2. POTENTIAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE SOCIETY'S POLICY ROADMAP.

Cross-cutting issues

Perhaps, most importantly, workshop and survey participants highlighted a number of important cross-cutting policy issues (Fig. 3), such as skills, funding, peer review and multidisciplinary research, which affect the ability of microbiologists to engage with the grand challenges identified. The Society will continue to address many of these issues, our actions informed by the invaluable views and concerns raised in these consultations.

What next?

The policy framework produced as a result of this process will provide direction for the Society’s policy activities going forward (Fig. 2). The framework has been fed into the development of the new strategy for the Society. The next step will be to drill down to specific actions we can take, concerning the priority challenges and issues identified.

Get involved

It is clear that many members are already aware and engaged with our policy activities and want to know more. You do not need to be a policy ‘expert’ to help us get microbiology on the policy agenda! Our policy outputs, including consultation responses and parliamentary briefings, are most effective when informed by members working in diverse disciplines and different career stages. Keep an eye on the Society’s monthly newsletter for opportunities to contribute and the latest policy news. You can also directly contact our Policy Officer, Paul Richards ([email protected]), if you think there is a key issue that the Society should be engaging with, or if you feel you can inform future work on the priorities that we have identified.

FIG. 3. CROSS-CUTTING POLICY ISSUES

SKILLS AND SUSTAINABLE CAREERS Is microbiology viewed as a ‘second-class’ subject? The Society could investigate how the wider public perceives microbiology and do more to promote it as a vital subject that can lead to diverse and sustainable careers. We need to ensure that microbiology students have the skills to work across microbiology, including academia, industry and health.

PEER REVIEW The microbiology community needs to be more engaged with peer-reviewing grants and papers. Promoting the inclusion of peer-review activities in Research Excellence Framework (REF) and professional development could be one way to improve this.

INTERDISCIPLINARY NETWORKING Learned societies can play a key role improving dialogue and networking between microbiology disciplines, with other scientific fields and with policy-makers. The policy workshops and recent series of cross-society antimicrobial resistance workshops were a great example of this. The Society could also provide further networking for members.

OPEN DATA AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY To tackle issues like antimicrobial resistance, more needs to be done to facilitate access to data from industrial research. Conflict between university and business IP interests can also impair microbiology research. The Society can play a role in promoting these issues and facilitating the discussions that need to take place between academia and industry.

INTERDISCIPLINARY FUNDING The boundaries between Research Councils and the expertise used to judge grants can impede multidisciplinary research. The Society has already raised these important issues in recent consultation responses and dialogue with the Research Councils.

RECOGNISING THE VALUE OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT There needs to be more formal recognition of public engagement activities by institutions and in the Research Excellence Framework.