Pandemic shows it’s time to 'protect and nurture global science' - Alice Gast

The COVID-19 crisis ensured that the "globalisation of research is...central to our way of life", writes President Alice Gast in the Financial Times.

In a letter responding to Yuval Noah Harari's essay on 'Lessons from a year of Covid', Professor Gast says: "The ways that geographically dispersed epidemiologists shared data, immunologists and medics co-created and tested vaccines and virologists sequenced new variants was, and is, breathtaking."

Researchers at Imperial, and their collaborators around the world, are central to these efforts. 

However, "we should not take this for granted", she warns. "As geopolitical tensions disrupt relations between states and businesses, national leaders must take care not to harm one of the current era’s greatest successes. We will need more, not less, international scientific co-operation in the future." 

The full letter can be read in today's Financial Times.