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Christy Choi


THE SHANGHAI LINK  During the Great Depression, my grandfather moved (from Britain) to Shanghai to work. Shanghai was modernising fast and his role was to supervise the installation of water meters throughout the city. He was promoted to chief inspector of the Shanghai Waterworks Company, and my father was born in China in 1932. During the troubles in Shanghai in the 1930s (when gangsters dominated the police force), my family came down to Hong Kong for a few months to live here.
ANALYSE THIS I don't know where I was born. Aged a few months old, I was adopted and then I grew up in Birmingham, England, until I went to Nottingham University to study mathematical physics. For my master's degree, I studied metallurgy and material science in America, which was wonderful. Then I returned to the UK for my PhD in chemistry with computer simulation.
Computing back then was so different. You were typing on a big electronic typewriter and, THUNK, THUNK, THUNK, you created these long data sets. There was no screen. You saw the effect of your typing on computer paper. If you made one mistake, you had to start again. At Harwell Laboratory, in Oxfordshire, I had access to the biggest computer in the UK in 1989. One Friday night, it crashed. When it rebooted, all the jobs it had been running were lost. Everyone had gone home, so me and a friend got sleeping bags and stayed over the weekend; we had sole access to half of the UK's capacity for computing . We got a year's worth of computing done. Two weeks later, we wrote a sophisticated paper on the basis of that data.
I think my entire career has been like that. Spotting the low-hanging fruit, spotting the interesting opportunities and just having a go. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's research.
NUCLEAR FAMILY When the Fukushima disaster struck in Japan in 2011, I was asked to work with the UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies to predict what would happen to the nuclear reactors (which had been hit by a tsunami triggered by an earthquake). The decisions we took were based entirely on science, using computer simulation. We knew things were not going to blow up, that the radioactive material would be released in a way that was limited and, therefore, we didn't need to evacuate people from Tokyo (240km away). We could support a measured response. The Japanese government was grateful for our assistance.
When a job with the (British) Foreign Office came up (two years later) it was suggested I might want to apply.
DIPLOMATIC SERVICE I became chief scientific adviser to the British government in 2013 (responsible for providing advice to ministers and other officials on science, technology and innovation). It's a terribly grand title. For the job, I had eight interviews and took two exams. It was awful. They test you on the way you think and how you behave under difficult circumstances. It's not clear how long my term is - but three to five years, probably. You don't want people to do jobs like this for too long. You need fresh ideas, novel ways of looking at issues. We're new to science diplomacy, so it's important to keep updating.
Ten years ago, you'd not have heard the phrase "science diplomacy". But today relationships between countries are based more and more on the transfer of data, scientists and technology, whether that is in regards to financial issues or the weather. Where political diplomatic relations are difficult, sometimes the scientific relations are good. That gives diplomats confidence that they can reach agreements on certain issues.
OUR MAN IN WHEREVER I've been furthering the UK's science diplomacy in lots of countries. How can we innovate together at the very highest levels? I was recently in Thailand, Burma and then Vietnam. In places like Burma people naturally believe themselves to be much further behind than they really are. But it's easy for a country to catch up. Well, not easy, it takes a lot of effort, but it can be done quite quickly; in half a generation you can be a lot further forward, and it's our job to be partners in that process. Hong Kong today is a world leader in technological innovation. Were you a world leader in technological innovation 30 years ago? This trip (to Hong Kong) has been about making the UK a scientific partner for Hong Kong. You understand China better than we do, and we understand you better than China does.
MORE POWER TO YOU  As population densities increase, you want to avoid environmental challenges, so you want to use less coal, but natural gas prices are volatile. Hydrocarbon resources are extraordinarily valuable and, I think, they should be exploited, but only for making things like plastics, or in instances where other choices are expensive, such as jet fuel for planes. You can't fly a plane on electricity. But you can create energy in a nuclear power plant using electricity and store it in the form of hydrogen or batteries, and that system actually produces less pollution than burning fossil fuels. If you pay attention to spent fuel issues, then nuclear energy is a good solution, for some countries. It strikes me that for Hong Kong, with its energy-intensive needs, nuclear power is a good option. I didn't realise (until this trip) that Hong Kong would be so interested in the issue of nuclear energy.


Nuclear power would benefit Hong Kong, says Robin Grimes, chief scientific adviser to the British government

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The chief scientific adviser to the British government tells Christy Choi about helping Japan deal with the Fukushima disaster how nuclear power can benefit Hong Kong


The chief scientific adviser to the British government tells Christy Choi about helping Japan deal with the Fukushima disaster how nuclear power can benefit Hong Kong.
