THERE is much media comment on the challenge to world leaders from the science academies of the G8 countries, who urged immediate measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions and so fight global warming created by the activities of humans.

Significantly, this call was also supported by the academies of Brazil, China and India.

Just in case you're confused about all this G7 and G8 jargon, the original G7 group represents the world's most economically powerful countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US. More recently Russia has been included in many of the meetings, so giving the G8, and we'll hear much more about this during their summit meeting at Gleneagles next month.

The academy of science of a country harnesses the leading scientific brains of that country so, when the voice of 11 national academies speaks as one, it particularly deserves to be listened to.

The Royal Society is the UK's national academy of science and to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) is the highest accolade that it can bestow on a UK or Commonwealth scientist. A measure of a university's scientific standing is, therefore, to some extent judged by the number of its scientists who are fellows. York can hold its head high with six fellows, the most recent being Professor Alastair Fitter who was elected only a couple of weeks ago for his outstanding work as one of the country's leading ecologists.

Professor Dale Sanders, also a fellow, followed Prof Fitter as head of the department of biology a year or so ago.

"Ah well", you might say, "what's this all got to do with business? Won't such boffins simply get totally immersed in their research to the exclusion of everything else?"

Hardly that. The head of a major university department, such as biology at York, operates very much like the chief executive of a substantial small business - in addition to maintaining a position as an outstanding scientist.

The biology department at York, with approaching 400 staff, now has a total annual income of £18 million with current open research contracts of £38 million, won competitively by its 57 "fee earners" (the academics) who raise an astonishing average of £190,000 per annum each in research grants and contracts. Some small business!

It is from this science powerhouse that the opportunities for commercialisation, licensing and spin-off companies arise and I'll be looking at some of these in more detail in later reports.

I was in London at the Royal Society last week at a workshop organised by the Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Technology on The Future Of Biotechnology. It was recognised that the UK maintains a strong science base in biotechnology, second only to the US, but that outstanding science alone will not be sufficient to sustain a competitive business position in the years ahead. While the UK is number one in European biotechnology, there is far less market pull, especially within healthcare, in Europe compared with the US.

European markets are also more fragmented with multiple regulatory authorities and finance is much harder to raise than in the US.

What all of this means is that, while we must certainly sustain the present excellence of the science base, much still needs to be done to improve the support and channels to market for our emerging businesses and products.

I'll also be looking at that in later reports but, in the meantime, it's good to know that York's bioscience and biotechnology research is in very safe hands indeed with our world-class academicians looking after both the science and the business.

Updated: 10:18 Wednesday, June 15, 2005