Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As we approach the festive season and the end of 2023, I look back at some of the major events of the year in which the AE Cardiff Hub has been involved, and pay some tributes.

At the end of this year, the Cardiff Hub has completed its work for the Horizon 2020 – funded CALIPER project, dealing with gender equality within research and innovation in Europe. The AE Hub’s work has been to produce a number of promotional videos to raise awareness and generate debate about gender inequality issues in STEM fields including interviews with important role models.

Our most important task remains the work for the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) via SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies), which is supported by a grant from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Having lead and co-ordinated the production of three Evidence Review Reports in previous years, we have been given a new major task this autumn, namely to produce an Evidence Review Report on Solar Radiation Modification. A strong international Working Group of specialists in the field has been assembled and we had the first meeting of the group at the end of November. The Hub has also co-ordinated and produced a number of literature reviews supporting other SAM projects.

Having been a co-author of SAPEA’s Quality Assurance Guidelines for both the initial version (2017) and the second edition in 2019, I have again this year been involved as a co-author in a major revision and updating of this key document, which is fundamental to all SAPEA activities. The new (2023) guideline has been formally accepted by the SAPEA Board and adopted by SAM.

The Hub has this year organised a number of events, both in-person and virtual. In the summer we arranged a celebration of the 30^th Anniversary of Academia Europaea’s journal European Review, held at Wolfson College in Cambridge with the title ‘Science and Scholarship in a Changing Europe’. We were delighted to have the active participation of Lord Rees of Ludlow OM FRS MAE, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz FRS MAE and many other distinguished European scientists and scholars. More recently, we held an event at Cardiff University – in cooperation with ConnectsUK – with the title ‘Beyond borders: strengthening EU-UK research collaboration’. We were happy that Professor Christopher Smith MAE (UKRI) was able to participate in this event together with many other distinguished colleagues.

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We have also been involved in an international event, ‘Physiology and Pathophysiology 2023, held in March at the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Halle, Germany. This event was co-organised with, and financed by, the American Physiological Society (APS) and the Leopoldina Academy. The majority of the speakers were MAEs, and it was a particular privilege for me to have been invited by the German Academy to deliver the 2023 Leopoldina Lecture as part of this event. All the talks were recorded and are freely available to watch on the website of the APS journal Function. The written articles associated with the symposium have been published in Function and are freely accessible (Open Access). This was the second time that the Hub had organised an event in cooperation with a major National Academy. In 2018, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of AE at the Royal Society in London.

At the very end of this year, just before Christmas, I look forward to officially representing AE at a special event at the start of the 2023 Semmelweis Symposium in Budapest, where a co-operation agreement between AE, Semmelweis University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong will be signed. The symposium and a following event in Szeged, both organised by Peter Hegyi MAE, will also be a joint celebration of the 10^th Anniversary of the Nobel Prize Award to Thomas Südhof and Randy Schekmann as well as my own 80^th birthday. It will be a privilege to lecture together with these giants in the biomedical field.

I want to thank the outgoing Vice-Chancellor of Cardiff University, Colin Riordan MAE, for his strong and enthusiastic support for the Cardiff Hub since its establishment in 2016 and for his active participation in the work of the Hub’s Steering Group. I am happy that our new VC, Wendy Larner, has kindly accepted to become a member of our Steering Group and look forward to future interactions.

Finally, I want to thank the fantastic Hub team, lead so very ably and effectively by our Hub Manager, Louise Edwards, for all the hard and successful work this year. Louise is recognised in Brussels as a superior Science Policy Officer with vast and proven experience. Juliet Davies has been a superb Event Organiser and Alice Sadler has dealt very efficiently with the CALIPER project. Our new staff member Rafael Carrascosa Marzo has already made a good start with his work for the new SAPEA project.

I wish you a peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Ole

Ole H Petersen CBE MAE ML FRS
Director of the AE Cardiff Knowledge Hub