Dublin, city of science

In 2012, Dublin will pick up the baton from Turin and take its place as City of Science – but will we be ready to take on the high-profile role?

DAVID FAHY’S office looks surprisingly sparse. That’s hardly surprising– he tells me he moved in just 20 minutes before I arrived.

We sit at the bare desk while people sporadically come in with furnishings – an apt setting to find out more about Dublin City of Science 2012.

A bit like the office, the campaign has a way before it will stage what is arguably Ireland’s biggest ever science event. However, Fahy assures us that structures are being put in place, work is going on behind the scenes and by early next year the effort should become more obvious.

Last month Fahy formally started as programme director for Dublin City of Science 2012. His task is to get the year-long calendar of science events, initiatives and meetings to happen.

Dublin is picking up the baton for the biennial event from the 2010 city, Turin.

The biggest single event here will be the EuroScience Open Forum conference in July of 2012, which will see around 6,000 scientists pour into our capital. “There has been nothing on this scale in terms of a focused conference held in Ireland to date,” says Fahy, whose previous background is in engineering and events management.

But he’s eager to underline that it won’t just be a flurry of activity up to the July meeting fizzling off after that. “We are trying to put together a minimum of a year-long programme of outreach activities, and the overarching theme for the conference is science serving society,” he says. “Its objective is to make sure to communicate the science agenda to as much of the general public as we can.”

The science agenda? “Science as a topic, interest, its place in society – we want to get away from the more negative views of science and scientists,” he explains.

And ideally the initiative – which at the time of the bid was estimated to cost €6 million, would leave a legacy – perhaps more cohesion between groups that connect scientists and society.

“We’d be more welcoming of proposals where we are an incubator for science,” says Fahy. He says calls for scientific and nationwide outreach proposals will go out in coming months.

He agrees his job might be easier had he been appointed earlier, perhaps when the Dublin bid was complete, but he’s keen to get motoring now. “In an ideal world I think they would have liked this role to be filled earlier this year,” he says. “It would have helped, there is a little bit of catch-up going on now, which is a bit of a struggle, but I am not going to get any satisfaction or sympathy bemoaning that fact.”

Until Fahy came on board, the running was mainly being done by the chief scientific adviser to the Government, Prof Patrick Cunningham, and colleague Eamonn Cahill.

Cunningham recalls the build-up to Dublin winning the bid, and how buy-in from committee members and the Government was an important factor.

“We found tremendous goodwill and in the end it was a unanimous decision that Dublin was the best choice,” he says. “That was in 2008 and all our graphs were still pointing upwards and we were beginning to be taken seriously in science. They were interested that Ireland was a country that really was on the move and was taking the knowledge economy seriously.”

And despite the grim economic news since, Cunningham believes the timing for Dublin City of 2012 bid was good for Ireland.

“If we had gone five or 10 years earlier we would not have had the credibility,” he says.

He likens the process to an Olympic bid: “You have to demonstrate the capacity to deliver an event that is better than any previous one,” he says. “It has to be reinvented each time because circumstances are different. You have to put together a family, a consortium, to deliver it and that will be different in each country.”

Cunningham now chairs both the local organising committee and the international steering committee.

While much of the scientific programme has yet to be formalised to the extent that it can be discussed publicly, he outlines how the conference will involve themes such as intercontinental partnerships – for China it looks at cities of the future, India’s theme is science and nuclear energy, for America it’s the Atlantic as a shared resource and for Africa, it’s about using science to close the gap of poverty.

While administrative issues have been something of a speedbump, he maintains the City of Science 2012 campaign will reach the targets.

“We want to achieve recognition for Ireland as a country where science serves society and that takes the knowledge economy seriously, that it’s not just rhetoric.”