EU Joint Research Centre to work with Cambridge University on science advice

JRC’s Director-General, Vladimír Šucha and Jennifer Barnes, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy at the University of Cambridge have signed an agreement to promote collaboration between the two institutions, as the JRC is looks to further develop its practices for using evidence in policymaking. 

Šucha said the agreement formalised a series of contacts between the two organisations. "I hope that European policy will profit from these contacts and from this ocean of knowledge within Cambridge," he said.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Cambridge vice chancellor, Leszek Borysiewicz, said the agreement will facilitate academic exchanges and the undertaking of joint research projects in areas such as sustainability, the green economy and biodiversity.

A pilot programme on green growth and sustainability is already being developed by the JRC’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability and the Cambridge Forum for Sustainability and the Environment.

“Policy making is such an imperfect science,” said Borysiewicz. But policy makers can able to overcome this challenge it if they are provided with the information they need so that “they feel they can make rational defensible decisions” he said.

Doing science just for the sake of science is not enough and scientists have to gain the trust of policymakers if they want their research to have a real-life impact.  “All the best science in the world, without that translation into policy, is of no practical value in the world of tomorrow,” Borysiewicz said.

However, for this system to work, scientists “need to know how to provide [scientific advice], how to interact, [and] how to understand what is in the mind of policymakers,” said Šucha.

This is the latest in a number of collaboration agreements signed by the JRC with universities, national academies and other umbrella research organisations.