Professor Lijun Shang has been awarded a grant from the BA for his work to address biosecurity education in the agribusiness sector.
Date: 15 March 2024
Director of the Biological Security Research Centre (BSRC), Professor Lijun Shang, received a grant from the British Academy (BA) to develop what he describes as, “an essential, but often under-researched area of biosecurity.”
Few sectors have seen rapid growth and development more than the world of agricultural business. With this fast-paced development, the need for biological security education and training has greatly increased.
Currently, countries are legislated by Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) conventions, but despite this, Lijun argues that adequate education and training to all stakeholders in the agriculture and food industry is not in place.
The newly funded project aims to explore the build-up capability in training in this sector and to compare existing security education methodologies used in CBRN in the UK and the Netherlands. The ultimate goal of this project is to prepare a bid for Horizon Europe, the EU's key funding programme for research and innovation.
"We aim to integrate agricultural capacity-building efforts into a Horizon Europe bid” Lijun explains, “aligning them with our existing initiative to build an international biological security education network, thus expanding our scope to address a range of CBRN issues."
Lijun, who is the named principal investigator for this project stated that: “This grant will enable my centre to prepare a sustainable grant with European colleagues and extend our recent work on developing an international biological security education network. I hope it will bring a successful international collaboration and further strength the centre’s leading role in biosecurity education and bring significant impact globally.”
