Earlier this week, as part of our Business Planning for the new Scottish Parliament session, the Finance and Public Administration Committee visited the University of Dundee.
As Convener of both the Committee and the Cross-party Group on Life Sciences, I was particularly enthusiastic.
The University of Dundee supports 9,410 jobs and generated £975 million for the Scottish economy last year.
Not only is it the top university in the UK for biological sciences Dundee University is also a global leader in the development of new medicines in areas like tuberculosis, which kills around 1.3 million people a year worldwide, and malaria, which kills around 600,000 children each year in Africa alone.
The Drug Discovery Unit is unique in excellence, research scale and industrial partnerships with the private sector.
Dundee University is ranked the top UK University for spin-out success.
On our visit, the Committee sought to better understand the university’s valuable and innovative work in start-ups and innovation in life sciences; an area crucial to Scotland becoming more economically productive in an area where we are already world-class.
I would like to thank the University of Dundee, particularly the Principal and Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Gillespie, Professor Sir Mike Ferguson, and Dr David McBeth for their warm welcome, tour of their state-of-the-art facilities labs and enthusiastic explanation of their cutting-edge work, and what the Scottish Parliament can do to help take them even further forward.
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