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In a 2008 interview, newly appointed BBSRC chief executive Douglas Kell argued that scientists should work across disciplinary boundaries—and that funding systems needed to make such collaboration practical. His advice to chemists was not to leave chemistry behind, but to apply it to a biological problem rather than offer excellent chemistry alone.
What Kell meant by getting out of scientific silos
Richard Van Noorden’s interview for Chemistry World, published on 27 November 2008, covered Kell’s newly begun four-year appointment as chief executive of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Kell was then also the former director of the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology and expected to continue working one day a week at the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre; those are details of his 2008 circumstances, not descriptions of current roles.
Kell’s core argument was that some research questions cannot be tackled well by a single discipline. He said multidisciplinary work could address problems that monodisciplinary projects could not, and warned that researchers unwilling to cross boundaries might find themselves increasingly isolated. The point was not that specialist expertise had become unnecessary: collaboration was a way to bring distinct skills to a shared problem.
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The interview describes BBSRC changing its peer-review and committee structure. Seven specialist committees were replaced by four broader committees spanning areas from organisms to tools and technologies. The stated intent was to make it easier to assess and support collaborative, multidisciplinary proposals. These committee numbers describe the arrangement reported in 2008; the interview does not establish what structure BBSRC uses today.
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Kell said chemists could apply across committees. For a chemistry-led proposal addressing biology, however, the application needed to make a biological contribution explicit. His example was DNA sequencing associated with Fred Sanger: chemistry could enable biological discovery, but the work’s value was not exhausted by its chemistry.
“The secret for good chemists [looking for interdisciplinary funding] is to use the skills they’ve got – but if they come to solve biological problems they’ve got to do something that isn’t just great chemistry.”
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— Douglas Kell, as quoted in the 2008 interview
Policy intent did not guarantee an easy application
Kell acknowledged a gap between the policy and researchers’ experience. The interview reports an RSC survey in which many UK scientists working at the chemistry-biology interface felt research councils did not adequately support interdisciplinary research. It gives no sample size, percentage, or full methodology, so the finding is best understood as a reported concern rather than a quantified measure of all researchers’ experience. Kell suggested that communication between funders and researchers could be part of the problem, not necessarily an absence of funding opportunity.
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Why computational biology and data mattered to Kell
Kell highlighted systems biology and metabolomics as important emerging areas, alongside computational biology. As biological datasets grew, he argued, researchers needed ways both to interpret information and to store it so it could be used across research fields.
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He pointed to semantic-web approaches and scientific papers marked with metadata as potential ways for computers to connect findings. The interview cited Project Prospect from the Royal Society of Chemistry and structured digital abstracts introduced by FEBS Letters as contemporary examples. These examples describe the publishing and data landscape discussed in 2008; the interview does not assess their present status.
To convey the scale of the information challenge, Kell said that peer-reviewed papers were appearing in Medline at two per minute and worldwide at five per minute. Those are figures Kell gave in 2008, not current publication rates or independently verified counts.
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Can fundamental science and economic impact coexist?
The interview also addressed BBSRC’s “grand challenges,” which were intended to increase economic impact and align funded work with areas supported by organizations such as the Technology Strategy Board. Kell rejected the idea that this required every BBSRC-funded project to be immediately applied. He argued for a mixed portfolio: long-term, fundamental research alongside applied work, with funding decisions based on scientific excellence.
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— Douglas Kell, as quoted in the 2008 interview
The interview also attributes to Kell the statement that 25 per cent of BBSRC funding went to departments whose names did not include “biology or life sciences.” That figure illustrates the breadth of support he described at the time; it should not be read as a current funding share.
What the interview says—and what it cannot establish
The interview is a snapshot of science-policy debates and BBSRC leadership in 2008. It records Kell’s case for crossing disciplinary boundaries, the council’s then-reported committee changes, and his view that fundamental and applied research could sit in the same portfolio. It does not establish whether those committees, funding proportions, publishing initiatives, or policies remain in place today.
Source: Richard Van Noorden, “Interview: Douglas Kell,” Chemistry World, 27 November 2008. Read the interview.
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