BIS appoints Professor Dafforn as Chief Scientific Adviser

The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) announced yesterday (26 May) that Professor Timothy Richard Dafforn will become the department’s Chief Scientific Adviser on 1 June.

He will succeed Professor John Perkins CBE in the role, which aims to ensure that the BIS’s policies, operations, and contributions to wider government issues are underpinned by ‘fit-for-purpose science, technology and engineering advice’.

Dafforn currently holds the positions of Entrepreneur in Residence for Synthetic Biology at BIS, and is Director of Knowledge Transfer, Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. He is also Head of Policy, a trustee and executive member of the Biochemical Society.

To date, Dafforn has authored over 100 publications and secured £10 million in lifetime research grants.

The part-time role will see Dafforn work for three days at BIS and for the remaining two days of the working week at his Birmingham post. This arrangement aims to ‘encourage the sharing of the latest thinking and learning in science and engineering’. 

BIS Permanent Secretary Martin Donnelly welcomed the “depth of knowledge and experience” Dafforn could bring to the position, and thanked Professor Perkins for “all his work over the past three years – in particular his highly successful Review of Engineering Skills”.

Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport added that he was “pleased to welcome Professor Dafforn to the cross-government network of Chief Scientific Advisers”, and would “look forward to working with him to ensure that the UK continues to lead the way in the use of science and engineering evidence by government”.

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