Prof. Hill Special Guest of the 1st Joint Meeting of World Top Scientists

The first joint meeting of Iranian top 1% scientists was held at Shora Hall of the central building of TUMS on the last day of 2015. USERN was honoured to host 32 top scientists and owner of highly cited papers from different parts of IRAN in different fields. We were also honoured by the presence and a short lecture from Professor Robert Hill who is also among the list of top 1% scientists and also an associate professor at TUMS. The following is a summary of Professor Hill quotes on the issue of developing ideas to products and his point of view on interdisciplinary collaboration:

Q: Welcome Professor Robert G. Hill to our ancient country Iran, and happy New Year. Hope you have enjoyed these few days here and good luck with your incoming lectures in the days ahead. Please introduce our self fully and describe in a few words your field of specialty and interest?

H: I am Professor Robert Hill from Barts and The London Medical School at Queen Mary University of London in the institute of dentistry. I’m also an associate professor here at TUMS and I’m visiting for the next few days and giving a number of lectures. I’m a materials engineer from the Mentley and my interests are in things from toothpaste to bone grafts particularly for the dental market and bone cements, filling material for storing teeth in dentistry and I have a particular interest in designing and developing new material in the laboratory and taking those through to commercial products which involves a lot of extra steps which includes perhaps filing of patents good manufacturing practice and commercial up scaling and that has been a particular interest. As a material engineer I have if this pure science engineering side to me I also am increasingly interested in developing new products from my research and taking my research into the commercial domain and making it use full to mankind. That I have been I suppose quite successful with. Often as scientists and engineers in universities we would sometimes be quite devolved and separated from the commercial world. Funding bodies and governments are particularly keen to see some benefits from moneys they invest in universities whether it be new jobs new products or general benefits to mankind. It also probably doesn’t matter whether you’re in USA, UK, Sweden or Iran. That’s not to say though that fundamental research is of less importance and we still need to invest in fundamental core and that’s also important. When you’ve publish a lot of papers and you publish another paper it’s just another paper! One of the things I got a real buzz out of recently is when I go to my local supermarket and I see a product developed like the nano toothpaste on the shelf and can say to my wife look I developed that! And that I get quite a buzz out of. In recent years how you do your research and how you look at the bigger picture with regard to patents good manufacturing practice and things like that these days particularly over the last five years I’ve been involved in developing a cement for sticking cochlear implants in place which has actually been in use for over 20 years, but more recently I’ve been working on new types of toothpaste including a nano-hydroxy apatite one which is on sale in the UK and elsewhere. And I’m also developing some Bioactive Glasses Toothpaste with controlled fluoride release capabilities which should reduce carries for instance.

Q: What do you think is the main obstacle in developing interdisciplinary cooperation’s among scientists with different fields of interest particularly the top 1% scientists?

H: I think one of the biggest problems in research these days is that real problems are no respect as of disciplinary boundaries and when we train scientists or engineers or clinicians we train specialists and we train them sometimes almost with tunnel vision and some times its quite difficulty for people to break out of their initial training and have the confidence to either collaborate with others from a different disciplinary background and understand the problems and issues that they face. A we also tend from funding sources because when you write a grant that crosses disciplinary boundaries its often reviewed by a person who has perhaps got a very much with narrow perspective than you’ve written the grant and that can be problem.

Q: What do you think is the responsibility of us as juniors in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries to help developing such a view and cooperation?

H: That’s a good question. I think it’s important... Particularly when you’re young you are more flexible and free. Perhaps you are not quite so constrained in your thinking and as we get older we tend to be narrower in our perspective. So I think as young people by definition, as young scientists as young engineers your more able to break out of the box and constrains caused by your initial discipline and perhaps not be afraid as young scientists to go and pick up some training in a different area sometimes that can be difficult because when you develop an expertise and reputation in an area and then you’ve got to go back and it’s like starting from scratch again but that can be very beneficial.

Q: How do asses Iran’s current scientific state in your own field and other fields?

H: What has interested me [here] in Iran is [that] often because of perhaps some western technologies are not available or equipment is not so readily available for Iranian scientists, perhaps in many ways it has negative effect and also has a positive effect [in that] for example last time I came here I saw that around in your innovation unit here at the university. I saw some distinctly different and radically new ways of doing things, so for example electro spinning [.] you hadn’t been able to buy equipment so one particular scientist had developed his own technique and equipment and now that equipment is sold worldwide. Sometime these restrictions can be negative but they could also be a positive benefit. One of the things that tend to irritate me worldwide is that you find people doing exactly the same things because everyone else is doing it. You find quite a different perspective on the way you solve problems in here.

By Farzaneh Rahmani