Championing Early-Stage Discovery
With GSF UK

Interview with GSF UK's Managing Director:
Jerome Solia

GSF UK has a strong presence in the UK corporate landscape. What was it about the Pasteur Foundation UK’s mission, and specifically the Impact Grant, that resonated most with your team’s values?

GSF is a support services specialist, with a long history of delivering services and innovation in the Life Sciences sector.  As a group, we even have our own team of in-house scientists, in the Research and Development department, based in our French headquarters. It was only natural for us to wish to help and promote the next generation of scientists and researchers and to support future discoveries.
 

The Impact Grant is designed to provide 'seed funding' for early-stage, high-potential research. Why does GSF UK believe it is important to support scientists at the very beginning of their breakthrough journeys?

All great breakthroughs have to start somewhere; therefore, the beginning of the journey is crucial. Early stage or seed funding could be the difference between an idea or a discovery taking shape into a useable reality, or not at all. We also live in times when, unfortunately, there is a lot of “bad press” and disinformation in social media particularly aimed at the next generation regarding science and research. We wish to position ourselves against this trend and help Pasteur to inspire the next generation of scientists.

​​

This partnership fosters collaboration between the Institut Pasteur in Paris and UK-based institutions. From a business perspective, how do you see the value of cross-border partnerships in solving global challenges?

There is nothing quite like cross-border collaboration for large scale achievements. If you look at the great current projects like ITER or CERN, you are dealing with thousands of scientists from hundreds of nations coming together to find solutions to present, and future, problems for humanity. Furthermore, Britain and France have a particularly long history of collaboration. We still look back at the Concorde plane as the high point of Aviation history and of what our nations are capable of together. Today if you blend the industrial know-how and collaboration of our countries and institutions you end up with a scientific and industrial European powerhouse for the greater good.
 

Looking ahead, what impact does GSF UK hope to see from this partnership, and what message would you send to other organisations considering supporting cross-border scientific research?

We are humbly honoured to be able to be one of the early supporters and sponsors of the Pasteur Foundation UK. As our company continues to grow and diversify in the UK we look to deepen our partnership with the foundation so that the solutions that do not yet exist today will be a reality tomorrow. We want our colleagues to be inspired and re-assured by the power of science and collaboration. So many of us use the results of research and innovation every day without even realising it. As organisations, I believe we need to collectively be more conscious of the progress, innovations and solutions we can help reach. This is for the benefit of our employees and their families, our clients and partners, and most importantly for society.