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JOHN PERKINS, IChemE Fellow and past president, has been appointed the chief scientific advisor to the UK government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

Each government department employs a chief scientific advisor to help ensure that its policies are informed by robust science and engineering advice.

“The main goals of BIS are to stimulate growth in the economy, and to encourage the development of manufacturing industry in the UK,” Perkins told tce. “Clearly, these are critically important goals right now and it will be important in developing strategies to have well informed engineering and scientific input. I feel my background in chemical engineering equips me well for the task.”

Perkins, who served as IChemE president in 2000, was the vice president and dean of the engineering and physical sciences department at the UK’s University of Manchester from 2004-2009, and before that a professor of chemical engineering and head of the chemical engineering and chemical technology department at Imperial College London.

Most recently, he served as provost of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi from 2009-2010. The university was established in 2007 as a hub for research into alternative energy and sustainability.

Sir John Beddington, government chief scientific advisor, welcomed the appointment.

“Professor Perkins’s engineering background and interdisciplinary expertise will help ensure that the department’s work is supported by robust evidence and technical insight. This is particularly important given the department’s responsibility for the science and research base and its interests in the development of the cutting edge technologies of the future.”

Perkins succeeds physicist Brian Collins, who completed his three-year term as chief scientific advisor in May 2011 and left to become the professor of engineering policy at University College London.

David Willetts, UK science and universities minister, said: “At BIS we are leading work across government to rebalance the economy and support the development of the high-tech industries and jobs of the future. High quality advice is the essential foundation to making good decisions about how to achieve the step change Britain needs.”