Sydney Brenner on how academia and publishing are destroying scientific innovation (Dzeng interview, 2014)
One of the highlights of my time as a scientist was having a long dinner with the great molecular biologist Sydney Brenner, who was a pivotal figure in the history of biology and whom sadly passed away in 2019. This, along with interviewing Garry Kasparov the same year, marked the start of my interest in […]
A Semi-Monocular I
An autobiographical piece about being born with a cataract, seeing double my whole life, and why I became a neuroscientist. ‘Of the essentials of preserving life, nourishing the breath has no peer. When the breath is exhausted, the body dies, when the people are downtrodden, the nation collapses’Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku, Letter to a sick […]
2013 – Coffee with Kasparov
“All we have to do is create opportunity for those who want to take risk. If we start funding this, there will be a long line of young people who are willing to participate, and will release a huge energy which has been so far suppressed. That’s why I’m trying to promote this message.” Below […]
2018 – Telegraph article (Phillips/Phillips): Science holds the key to unlocking economic success
This is an article published in the Telegraph in June 2018 by myself and my brother, concerning UK national strategy in science and innovation. We called on the UK to ‘lead the future by creating it’. Below it is a comment and endorsement of it as ‘good advice’ by computing pioneer Alan Kay, whose phrase ‘create the […]
