• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

PROFILE ENCOURAGING INNOVATIVE RESEARCH PROFESSOR DAVID DELPY FREng FMedSci FRS Professor David Delpy FREng FMedSci FRS has been the chief executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council since 2007. EPSRC is the main UK government agency for funding research and training in engineering and the physical sciences, investing more than £850 million a year in a broad range of subjects. Michael Kenward OBE caught up with Delpy in December 2010 and talked to him about his career and EPSRC’s current focus. Physics, engineering, medicine, David Delpy has worked in them all. He even Parental kick start had a short spell as a corporate technology Like many engineers before him, Delpy went trouble-shooter, not to mention starting into science because he excelled at it at his up a business to turn his own research Newcastle grammar school where he took into marketable products. All of this has maths, physics and chemistry at A-Level. provided great grounding for his current It also helped that his father had been a job as chief executive of the EPSRC. Now mechanic before entering the civil service. he is in a position to help aid a renaissance Mending motorcycles was a family hobby. In recognition of his outstanding services to of manufacturing in the UK during what is, His father had built a side-car in the back the national community, Professor David Delpy was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of he believes, a window of opportunity for room of the house and colluded in Delpy’s Science by Brunel University in July 2010 research and engineering. underage motorcycling on a disused airfield. INGENIA ISSUE 46 MARCH 2011 47 PROFESSOR DAVID DELPY FREng FMedSci FRS PROFILE “If you have to do a study by sacrificing an animal every time It helped that Hamamatsu wanted to develop from being a supplier of you want to measure something, it becomes very expensive components to a maker of systems. Over the years, Delpy’s group got not only and time consuming. An alternative that does not require the equipment, including lasers that were at the sacrifice of an animal is obviously a socially more acceptable technological cutting edge, but considerable financial support. In return, the company way of undertaking research. So finding ways of monitoring marketed the first commercially successful infrared spectrometers developed at UCL. small animals has been a big driver in my research.” One consequence of this work has been that imaging techniques have reduced the use of animals in research. “If you have to do a study by sacrificing an animal every time you want to measure something, it becomes very expensive and time consuming. An alternative that does not require the sacrifice of an animal is obviously a socially more acceptable way of undertaking research. So finding ways of monitoring small animals has been a big driver in my research.” Academe and business David Delpy really enjoyed working with companies, developing commercial products. “There is no greater incentive than actually seeing your instrument being used in a neo-natal unit or an adult intensive care When the time came to go to university, the After a while Delpy wanted to return to Further advances in brain scanning came unit”, he says. young Delpy looked for sandwich courses physics so he scoured the job ads and came when Delpy read a paper about research on Delpy’s business acumen saw him that would allow him to spend time in up with one in an area that he hadn’t heard cats. “Franz Jöbsis, an American physiologist, setting up a company with his boss, industry as well as at university. He wanted of, let alone thought of entering, medical described a measurement across a cat’s Dawood Parker, to commercialise their to do something practical, so he looked for physics. “The subject never appeared in my head in the near infrared, just beyond work on gas sensors. They had developed courses in applied physics, which pointed undergraduate course at Brunel,” says Delpy, the visible. In that region you could see a non-invasive oxygen-measuring system him towards the new universities. Delpy “or if it did it passed me by.” absorption changes due to oxygenation for adults for another company but the became one of the first undergraduates at He applied for a Medical Research of the haemoglobin, because the blood company couldn’t be persuaded to produce Brunel University. Council studentship at University College changes its colour as it oxygenates and a version for the neonatal intensive care On graduation he joined Darchem, part Hospital Medical School and found deoxygenates.” incubators used to carry babies around of the William Baird group, a set of 17 small himself working on the development of Delpy sought a grant from the Wellcome the country. So Delpy and his colleagues engineering companies. Delpy’s job was pressure transducers for measuring blood Trust – through a scheme designed to get offered to make the instruments if the as something of a flying trouble-shooter: pressure in the arteries, particularly of academics and businesses working together company would market them. “When there was a technical problem in premature or small babies. After working – to study an enzyme involved in taking The business grew, moved to Wales one of the companies, one of us young on nuclear power, acoustic monitoring, jet oxygen into brain cells, generating energy. and floated on the Alternative Investment graduates in technical management services engines and many other areas of ‘heavy A colleague at Kings College London Market. It was decision time again for Delpy. would be sent down to help out.” engineering’, Delpy had finally found an lent Delpy a military grade non-commercial Did he want to leave academia and work One project provided an early lesson intellectual home. photomultiplier (PMT) tube. Then a contact for the company? “I decided that I still liked in the financial facts of life. There was a with one supplier led to a 25-year relationship academia, so I stayed at UCL,” he says. The Darchem business that made stainless that, among other things, funded Delpy’s company went on, like many small tech steel insulation for jet engines and Rolls- Imaging advances chair at University College London (UCL). businesses, to be acquired by an American Royce was a major customer. At the time These were interesting times for medical The company was Hamamatsu Photonics. company that wanted a base in Europe. the aerospace company was in financial physics. Nuclear magnetic resonance The boss of Hamamatsu had heard difficulty because of the cost of developing (NMR), particularly NMR spectroscopy, was about this pioneering group who were the revolutionary RB-211 turbofan engine. entering the field. There was also infrared trying to shine light across baby’s heads Taking the lead When Delpy wasn’t working on engineering imaging, along with infrared spectroscopy. and turned up at the laboratory. He liked With a career that spans academia, industry problems, he says that he “spent a lot of time At the time NMR was limited to very small what he saw and asked if he could help. and the health service Delpy has experience reading through The Financial Times to see magnets. “We did the very first human brain “This was manna to an academic, so I said, in most of the activities that, as chief what the latest news was about Rolls-Royce. phosphorus spectrum. It happened to be a ‘Yes, we would like some very sensitive executive of the EPSRC he now has to deal I learnt a lot then about finance and risk of baby,” says Delpy: “as you couldn’t have got PMTs and if you want to help fund us, with. He took up this role in 2007 keen to high-tech development.” an adult’s head in.” then that’ll be good’.” expand his leadership experience. “I thought Professor David Delpy FREng FMedSci FRS 48 INGENIA INGENIA ISSUE 46 MARCH 2011 49 PROFESSOR DAVID DELPY FREng FMedSci FRS PROFILE One way in which EPSRC is trying to help companies is through its online database of research grants, which numbers 6,000 projects totalling in the region of £3 billion. that having tried to lead change within UCL businesses together and getting the balance with that evidence, he adds, the Minister with companies and other organisations, Getting the word out is an essential part of for engineering. “What has happened has it would be an interesting challenge to try right, says Delpy can bring enormous benefits. of State for Universities and Science, “David including government departments, that what is known as the ‘impact agenda’. As made us realise that in the end you have got to do it on a broader stage. I hadn’t fully Encouraging fruitful collaboration is just Willetts argued the case well”. jointly fund research activities. someone who always wanted his research to make real products. We are the seventh realised what it involved.” He admits that it one of the tasks on Delpy’s desk. The recent He acknowledges that there are One way in which EPSRC is trying to lead to something useful, Delpy naturally biggest manufacturing economy in the world. took him a year to work out “what the drivers government spending review focused the barriers and disincentives in the system to help companies is through its online signs up to demonstrating impact. In his OK, we were fourth, and at the moment the were” in Whitehall. research community on making a sound for researchers engaging with knowledge database of research grants, which view, research shouldn’t just sit on a shelf trajectory is in the wrong direction.

Load more

  3

Copy Link