Professor John Anderson

Last week, Northern Ireland lost one of its entrepreneurial heroes when Professor John Anderson,69 succumbed to the illness that had dogged him for the past couple of years. He was unanimously elected as the inaugural NISP CONNECT Innovation Founder in 2010 for his contribution and dedication to the promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation in Northern Ireland and specifically for his creation of successful companies to take the portable defibrillator into world markets.
Professor Anderson was a key member of the team at the Royal Victoria Hospital that created the world’s first defibrillators. John was quick to realize that lives would only be saved if the technology was taken to market commercially; so he became an entrepreneur. Today, Professor Anderson is best known as founder and Chief Technology Officer of HeartSine® Technologies Inc., a world leader in life-saving defibrillation therapy. He is also a founder of Intelesens, the manufacturer of world-leading body-worn vital sign monitoring devices. In all, as if to prove his entrepreneurial spirit, he was responsible for ten start-up companies in the field of medical engineering – all of which delivered life-changing or life-saving technologies.
Recognising the need for continuous advancement in research, Professor Anderson formed the Northern Ireland Bio-Engineering Centre (NIBEC), at University of Ulster (Jordanstown), and was its first Director. He was also the Head of the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering at that University. He had been Head of BioEngineering at the Royal Victoria Hospital, when the world’s first mobile coronary care unit was launched in 1967. He has also been responsible for developing the leading edge technology utilized in many defibrillators, including semi-automatic and public access units – as seen in many airports and public buildings today and which have saved countless lives. In 2002 Professor Anderson was awarded a UK Business Fellowship, one of only twelve awarded.
Professor Anderson held an M. Phil. and D. Phil. in Bioengineering and was granted a Personal Chair in Medical Electronics in 1990. In 1994 he was made a founding Fellow of the Biological Engineering Society.
John was a Chartered Scientist and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He published over 300 papers in the field of bioengineering research and held 40 patents in the field. His publication record reflects his intense interest in sudden cardiac death, with particular reference to the early and rapid treatment of cardiac arrest.
Professor Anderson was a person with many talents, rarely found in one individual, qualified in both medicine and engineering and with vast experience and insight which proved invaluable to others. It was a great honour to have one of Northern Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs and innovators to receive the inaugural Innovation Founder Awards where we hoped he would inspire the innovative entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

John has been greatly missed during his illness for his encouragement and his ideas; we were all hoping to have him back among us again. Second only to his family, the young technical entrepreneurs of NI were his first concern and they will miss him most of all, even if they never had the privilege to meet and work with him. To show how important they were to him, when commenting on the honour in 2010, he said: “I have always subscribed to the belief that in Northern Ireland we have some of the most innovative and creative minds around and am delighted to be joining the 25K Awards event to celebrate and showcase the latest intellectual capital to come forward. It is a great honour to be recognised in this way and I am looking forward to sharing my experiences with the next batch of innovation entrepreneurs, many of which certainly have the potential to compete on the global stage.”

Sadly this was not to be but still since so many have had John as their guiding light, we should all take the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the task to build his lasting legacy.

STEM in Action

I recently attended a ‘STEM in Action’ event in Stormont hosted by Mervyn Storey MLA on behalf of Sentinus, the leading promoter of STEM subjects in Northern Ireland. It was one of those occasions that you couldn’t help but come away encouraged and energised once more about the potential of the next generation.

Sentinus was using the event as a platform to encourage the Assembly to consider the importance of STEM engagement to the economy and to showcase how the recommendations set out by the STEM Review are actively being addressed by the organisation. Importantly the centrepiece of the event was the very people who we need to reach with our message – students from across NI who were there to demonstrate their involvement in a range STEM projects – some of which have been award winning across the UK. There is nothing quite like seeing and hearing first-hand how this type of work impacts on engaging young people and indeed how the practical application of their STEM skills has significant business value, even at this early stage.

Sentinus works with over 60,000 young people a year in Northern Ireland to enthuse them about science and technology to and encourage students to follow careers in these sectors. They provide a wide range of programmes designed to support the teaching and learning of these subjects particularly within a real world context. They cover the full school age range from primary up to Post 16 and FE/HE colleges and the enthusiasm is such that every year demand from schools massively outweighs the resources available.

The event provided a real insight into how young people can progress the STEM agenda for the benefit of the Northern Ireland economy. On display were exhibitions of students’ STEM projects from a number of initiatives including the ‘Team R&D’ Programme.Here teams of talented Lower Sixth students work with companies to solve real industrial R&D problems and is it estimated that in that last two years alones they have saved the participating companies over £250,000 in costs. An example was Lagan College that was linked with the Army Air Corps to investigate how damage is being caused to the tail rotor bearings of the Gazelle helicopter when its Tail Rotor Hub Cover is removed or installed. They have worked to redesign cover attachments to eradicate future bearing damage.

Another project I was particularly taken by was that of a team from Grosvenor Grammar– who worked on the Design for Sport programme to develop innovative, but practical, ideas for a sports venue for new or existing sports to fulfill a community need…a topical issue for NI in recent times.Their solution, took into account aesthetics, environmental factors, sustainability, community/society, legacy and flexibility. The pupils went on to represent NI at the ‘Create Sport Go4set’National Finalsin London in June 2011 and were awarded overall winners.At this event Grosvenor competed against students from 12 other regional finalist schools from across the United Kingdom, achieving first prize following a rigorous assessment from a panel of judges, as well as a public enquiry which took the form of a planning application meeting.  Mark Williamson, one of the organisers of the event, said of Grosvenor’s entry: “In the 5 years that I have been involved with ‘Go4set’ it is by far the best project that I have come across.”  High praise indeed.

The uptake and ongoing interest in STEM subjects is of huge importance to NI’s economic success particularly in the development of a knowledge based economy. There seems to be at least a growing awareness of just how critical it is that we have more of your people staying engaged with STEM subjects. We now need to ensure that it continues to get the focus and funding it richly deserves.

Life After A levels

During the last couple of weeks, I’ve written on the subject of our national exams, GCSE and A- levels. While the top of the mountain at school, in life they are but a foothill; so what can happen next? I thought I’d share with you one answer from one of our elite but not so rare A-level stars, I’m proud to say, with a full pack of A*s. Unusually, Rose, has chosen to use her qualifications in STEM, not to do Medicine, but to take up Engineering at Cambridge, as one of 6 from Ulster in a year of 330. She takes up the story.

“I found life in Cambridge to be a complete change from A levels. Being such an old city, Cambridge has a very different atmosphere to Belfast. Town and Gown are totally intertwined. Days seem to last a lot longer than they ever did at home, because they’re so crammed with activities.

“Engineering typically involves around 45 hours of work per week, 20 of which are in timetabled lectures and labs, 2-3 in two-to-one supervisions, and a recommended 24 hours of private study. I have to admit I wasn’t fully prepared for how difficult the work was going to be, or for the quantity of it. Luckily we were eased into it very gently in the first term, and there were plenty of opportunities to go and find out how best to structure your week.

“Once that’s done, the great thing about Cambridge is how many different clubs and societies there are available; so it’s easy to find things to fill up your free time. Personally, I spend the majority of mine on the river, coxing an eight of muscular young men.

“The Engineering faculty has taken every opportunity to highlight the importance of renewables and sustainability, a personal favourite of mine; so that was the sector in which I looked for a summer placement.

“I thought I would be torn because I also wanted to return to Belfast for the vacation, to catch up with friends and family, whom I can’t see during term time, and I wasn’t aware of anything going on here in my sector. Imagine my delight, then, when I found Belfast based, Pure Marine Gen on the Engineering Department database. Through its founder, Paul Brewster, I have discovered that Northern Ireland and the Science Park, in particular, has much more to offer than I had previously realised. I just hadn’t been aware of just how many science and technology companies that are based here. It’s really encouraging to see somewhere in Northern Ireland with so much potential for growth. Having worked here all summer, I’ve seen that Northern Ireland has a lot to offer, and that moving away for university definitely doesn’t have to mean moving away for good.

“I think the encouragement to return to Belfast after university should begin before students leave home for university, and it is something about which they need to be reminded throughout their university careers.”

All I can say is watch this space, Rose!

 

GCSE results, what to do with them next.

As our A-level students celebrate, commiserate and covert their collected points into higher and further education courses, we too should take stock, especially since, as I write, the younger cohort approach their day of dread this Thursday for the GCSE results and will need advice on what to do next. Being guided alone by the results is not necessarily the best thing to do.

Once again for many years running, as pointed out by Joanne Stuart, in her letter to the Belfast Telegraph last week, Northern Ireland has beaten UK averages in the proportion of A and A* in the cohort. But Joanne goes on to show that below the surface, all is not well. In the Sciences, we are beginning to fall below the national curve. The Institute of Physics, for example, made National news last week, reporting the success of the “Brian Cox Effect” with Physics back in the top 10 A-levels for the first time in nearly a decade. So not only are we below the average, we’re actually going the opposite way. Joanne argues,

“The [NI] economic future will not be achieved without the supply of STEM skills and knowledge and that has to start with the attraction of young people into STEM disciplines at school” and so “..businesses must be involved in all aspects of STEM promotion, from partnering with primary schools to develop children’s interest, through supporting careers guidance, facilitating CPD for teachers and developing skills within schools.”

I agree and that begins now, if not before, with this cohort just deciding what to do with their GCSE collection.

The next generation of AS- and A-level students will face a world, in which, practically all issues (and hence all jobs in global growth sectors) depend on the success of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That’s why it’s front and centre of (nearly) every national and regional economic strategy. We are likely to be no different when it’s published but we haven’t bottomed it out yet. However the only dissent I have heard concern capacity and the need to continue to import STEM talent and that hardly alters the logic.

I think parents, teachers and principals have to look beyond the headline results. I offer myself as a case in point. My worst mark ever and by a long way was in first form Science. Yet it was some of the experiments, now sadly not done at school for reasons of health and safety, in which we transformed red Mercury oxide into a pool of liquid metal Mercury by blowing a Bunsen flame on to a little pile of the red powder on a depression in a block of graphite. I understand the H&S arguments but what a pity for every child not to experience directly the wonderment of the alchemists and the job that must be done for us all by business and industry.

I went on to even up the score between my subjects so that pre O-level, it was very unclear what to do. Mind you my parents, most of my teachers and definitely my principal knew what was good for me. The results supported that but I suspect that, even if they hadn’t, I would have been pushed STEMward. I think we owe it to our kids and to our economy not to let other arguments outweigh the need to get back on track with Science and Maths.