Senator Kelvin Ogilvie: Senate Scientist
Note to readers: Senator Kelvin Ogilvie retired from the Senate of Canada in November, 2017. Learn more about his work in Parliament.
Research Canada recently honoured Senator Kelvin Ogilvie for his six years of work with the health research organization. Senator Ogilvie, a chemist and biotechnology expert, previously served as Chair of the Parliamentary Health Research Caucus and now serves as its Past Chair and scientific advisor. He is also chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
Can you speak about the work you’ve done with the Parliamentary Health Research Caucus these past few years?
The idea of the Health Research Caucus was to bring science to the Hill to inform parliamentarians of the great work that scientists are doing — funded by Parliament. The Health Research Caucus got started in 2009, and then I took over in 2010.
I decided to create an environment in which parliamentarians could move around and talk to researchers, and they could interact with them and learn how their research is benefitting Canadians. Quite often the researchers might come from universities or research centres in their own constituency, so it was a win-win environment.
We then moved to the next step, which was to identify a theme. We might have a theme on cancer research in Canada, for example. So we would identify leading researchers from across Canada whose research has gotten to the point where it is more than just a promising development, it has been shown to have real possibility in treating cancer, or is actually bringing considerable benefits.
It turned out to be a really successful model, and we’ve adopted this model as the key theme from my senatorial office, and we’ve expanded it into all other areas of science. Over the years we’ve sponsored many research kiosk events on the Hill. Our office has worked very closely with organization such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CIF) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), only to name a few. The benefit of using this concept is that Parliamentarians get a chance to chat with eminent researchers and learn about fascinating and innovative research that benefits all Canadians.
How does this research actually impact Canadians? How do these events contribute to Canadian science?
Well, those are the key questions. And the reality is that innovation is fuelled by discovery. Discovery itself is not innovation; innovation is when you take the discovery and apply it to some problem society deems important, for instance to cure a disease.
The events that we do are intended to show that. That’s why I said at the outset that we try to bring researchers whose research has attained the point that it’s having an application impact. And it’s this kind of research and development — one that leads to social and economic benefit — that’s so crucial for the economy and the development of the country.
It’s absolutely critical that parliamentarians appreciate the enormous importance of funding basic research that can lead to this kind of transition.
What role does education play? How early do we have to start motivating young people to be scientists?
There’s no “too early” in trying to motivate young people to be scientists, and that of course occurs through the education system in general.
But a second way of impacting young people toward careers in science is to have our media promote scientific achievement by Canadians whenever it occurs. And we don’t do that terribly well.
On top of that, we need universities that are progressive and that provide exciting opportunities for young people to go pursue, and follow studies into the leading areas that people are interested in, and the problem areas that exist.
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Senator Kelvin Ogilvie: Senate Scientist
Note to readers: Senator Kelvin Ogilvie retired from the Senate of Canada in November, 2017. Learn more about his work in Parliament.
Research Canada recently honoured Senator Kelvin Ogilvie for his six years of work with the health research organization. Senator Ogilvie, a chemist and biotechnology expert, previously served as Chair of the Parliamentary Health Research Caucus and now serves as its Past Chair and scientific advisor. He is also chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
Can you speak about the work you’ve done with the Parliamentary Health Research Caucus these past few years?
The idea of the Health Research Caucus was to bring science to the Hill to inform parliamentarians of the great work that scientists are doing — funded by Parliament. The Health Research Caucus got started in 2009, and then I took over in 2010.
I decided to create an environment in which parliamentarians could move around and talk to researchers, and they could interact with them and learn how their research is benefitting Canadians. Quite often the researchers might come from universities or research centres in their own constituency, so it was a win-win environment.
We then moved to the next step, which was to identify a theme. We might have a theme on cancer research in Canada, for example. So we would identify leading researchers from across Canada whose research has gotten to the point where it is more than just a promising development, it has been shown to have real possibility in treating cancer, or is actually bringing considerable benefits.
It turned out to be a really successful model, and we’ve adopted this model as the key theme from my senatorial office, and we’ve expanded it into all other areas of science. Over the years we’ve sponsored many research kiosk events on the Hill. Our office has worked very closely with organization such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CIF) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), only to name a few. The benefit of using this concept is that Parliamentarians get a chance to chat with eminent researchers and learn about fascinating and innovative research that benefits all Canadians.
How does this research actually impact Canadians? How do these events contribute to Canadian science?
Well, those are the key questions. And the reality is that innovation is fuelled by discovery. Discovery itself is not innovation; innovation is when you take the discovery and apply it to some problem society deems important, for instance to cure a disease.
The events that we do are intended to show that. That’s why I said at the outset that we try to bring researchers whose research has attained the point that it’s having an application impact. And it’s this kind of research and development — one that leads to social and economic benefit — that’s so crucial for the economy and the development of the country.
It’s absolutely critical that parliamentarians appreciate the enormous importance of funding basic research that can lead to this kind of transition.
What role does education play? How early do we have to start motivating young people to be scientists?
There’s no “too early” in trying to motivate young people to be scientists, and that of course occurs through the education system in general.
But a second way of impacting young people toward careers in science is to have our media promote scientific achievement by Canadians whenever it occurs. And we don’t do that terribly well.
On top of that, we need universities that are progressive and that provide exciting opportunities for young people to go pursue, and follow studies into the leading areas that people are interested in, and the problem areas that exist.