Science Strategy 2013-17
A new age of discovery
CONTENTS
Foreword1
About NHM Science2
A new voyage of discovery3
Three Focal Areas
Focus area 1. Scientific discovery4
Focus area 2. Scientific infrastructure5
Focus area 3. Scientific engagement6
Five Challenges
Challenge 1. The Digital NHM7
Challenge 2. Origins, evolution & futures8
Challenge 3. Biodiversity discovery9
Challenge 4. Natural resources & hazards10
Challenge 5. Science, society & skills11
Resources & funding12
Measuring success13
Front cover image: Visualisation of the four hundred thousand Earth and Life
science specimens georeferenced in the NHM collections database, as of April
2013. The length of the line is proportional to a log of the number of specimens
sampled in each locality. An interactive version of this visualisation can be found
at http://data.nhm.ac.uk/globe
FOREWORD
This is a time of extraordinary opportunities for the Natural History Museum.
Digital and molecular technologies promise to
revolutionise our core scientific disciplines. These
technologies are not only game changers in terms of
the type and scope of the science that we can do, they
also make it possible to distribute our data and findings
to a truly global audience. Taken together with urgent
needs to find scientific solutions to major environmental
problems and to engage the public with the use of
science in the natural world, these advances bring the
Museum’s work to the forefront of essential scientific
endeavors.
It is also a time of profound change in the way that
science is done. Although individual scientists continue
to make important discoveries, it is increasingly common
for institutions to join forces to address major scientific
problems. Similarly, mass citizen science has made it
possible to undertake projects that were previously
unfeasible. Such approaches present us with the
opportunity to capitalise on our unique public profile,
and our national and international collaborative networks,
to forge new coalitions to take on questions that have
previously been beyond our grasp.
Alongside these opportunities we also find ourselves in an
extremely challenging financial climate. To take
advantage of new technologies and fulfill our scientific
and public missions we must diversify the funding sources
that have traditionally supported our activities. More than
ever before we will need to demonstrate the value of
work, and our ability to form effective coalitions, to tackle
the major scientific and societal questions of our time.
A key element of our strategy is to prioritise activities
on where we judge we can make the greatest scientific
impact. We will do this by focusing on the following five
major scientific challenges:
Five challenges:
1. The Digital NHM
2. Origins, evolution & futures
3. Biodiversity discovery
4. Natural resources and hazards
5. Science, society & skills
The overall purpose of this strategy is to chart a path
by which the Museum can take full advantage of the
opportunities available. It is a time for us to change,
to grow and to evolve as individuals and as a unique
scientific community. The Natural History Museum
has adapted successfully many times over its 200-year
history. We will adapt this time as well and emerge as a
better, more united, more effective, and more innovative
team for having done so.
Professor Ian Owens
Director of Science
1
ABOUT NHM SCIENCE
The NHM is one of the world’s great natural history museums, combining excellence in
scientific discovery, scientific collections, training and public engagement. Its scientific
mission is to answer questions of broad significance to science and society using its unique
expertise and collections, and to share, communicate and apply its skills and findings
The collective expertise of Museum staff represents a
unique national and international resource. The scientific
staff is one of the largest expert bodies of its kind in the
world, with approximately 300 scientists working with
an equivalent number of scientific associates, students,
visitors and volunteers. Their activities span the earth
and life sciences with fields of expertise that include
planetary sciences, mineralogy, palaeontology, taxonomy,
systematics, biodiversity, genomics, and informatics.
The Natural History Museum has a long-standing
reputation for authority and innovation in the study
and classification of natural diversity, collaborating
with a wide range of institutions across the world. Each
year its scientists publish several hundred scientific
papers, including regular contributions to high impact
international journals, and provide expert advice to
Government and industry.
The core duty of the Natural History Museum is to
protect, develop and provide access to what is arguably
the world’s most important natural history collection. In
addition to traditional specimen collections the NHM is
home to a large collection of library materials, archives
and art, and is developing new molecular and digital
collections. The Museum also plays a lead role in a series
of national and international networks, bringing together
global collections information and expertise, and driving
the adoption of new technologies and standards.
2
The Natural History Museum provides unparalleled
opportunities to engage the public with scientific ideas
and findings: this is a fundamental part of the work of the
museum’s scientists. Individual scientists regularly interact
face-to-face with public audiences, appear in the media,
and create new galleries, exhibitions and web resources.
Together with collaborators, the NHM also develops
innovative approaches to large-scale citizen science that
directly engages the public with the process of scientific
discovery of the natural world.
Another important area of the Museum’s activity is
capacity building in its fields of scientific expertise. In
partnership with universities, at any one time the Museum
supervises more than 100 PhD students, teaches a
growing number of MSc/MRes courses, and either leads
or participates in a series of international training courses
and networks of excellence. Building on the Museum’s
unique national role, we also train students in how to
engage the public with scientific issues and discoveries.
The NHM’s scientific activities are funded through
a combination of grant-in-aid support from the UK
Government, which is provided by the Department for
Culture, Media and Sport, and a range of external sources
including research councils, charities, trusts, industry,
consultancy contracts, corporate sponsorship and
individual philanthropic gifts.
A new voyage of discovery
Our scientific mission is to answer questions of broad significance to science and society
using our unique expertise and collections, and to share, communicate and apply our skills
and findings.
Our distinctive approach integrates activity
across three focal areas:
1. Scientific discovery
2. Scientific infrastructure
3. Scientific engagement
Our priorities are framed by five challenges:
1. The digital NHM
2. Origins, evolution & futures
3. Biodiversity discovery
4. Natural resources and hazards
5. Science, society & skills
3
FOCUS AREA 1. SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
We provide answers to questions of fundamental scientific importance and broad relevance
to society using our unique collections and expertise.
We will enhance our role as a global leader in key areas
of our core disciplines of earth sciences and life sciences,
and in the use of new approaches to collections-based
research and informatics, to address major scientific
questions. We also aim to increase the impact of our
work on large-scale environmental analyses and
predictive modeling.
Our distinctive approach is to use the combination
of our collections and our specialist expertise in
taxonomy, systematics, mineralogy and informatics to
tackle scientific questions in novel way. This approach
distinguishes us from universities and other research
institutes and allows us to form complementary
partnerships with a diverse international network of
other institutions.
Key topics of investigation include new approaches
to taxonomy and systematics, the origin and evolution
of life, the earth and the solar system; environmental
change; biodiversity discovery and loss; global health;
food security; and the sustainable exploitation of
natural resources.
4
Objectives:
To carry out distinctive, internationally excellent
and relevant research, related to our collections:
• Further our understanding of the processes that create
and maintain biological and geological diversity.
• Focus our activities on questions of high priority in
science and to society.
• Address ‘grand challenges’ in taxonomy and systematics
to maximize our contributions to the fields of earth and
life sciences.
To increase the quality and impact of our
research and establish scientific leadership:
• Increase the impact of our scientific output.
•W
in more external funding to support our
scientific work.
• Lead and participate in collaborative partnerships and
networks to address our five major scientific challenges.
Develop national and international capacity in
our areas of scientific activity:
• Deliver postgraduate training programmes at PhD and
MSc/MRes levels.
• Establish a portfolio of specialist training courses in
science, curation and public engagement.
• Develop new on-line training programmes.
FOCUS AREA 2. SCIENTIFIC INFRASTRUCTURE
We will develop our collections and science facilities to provide state-of-the-art
infrastructures to support the international scientific community.
Our core role is to protect, develop and provide access
to our globally important scientific collections for the
benefit of future generations.
We will work together with our national and international
partners to harness the opportunities offered by digital,
molecular and imaging revolutions. These technologies
will enable us to enhance the value of global natural
history collections by improving the accessibility and
utility of collection data in both the physical and virtual
realms.
Objectives:
To develop, refine and care for the collection and
related information:
• P rovide a safe and secure physical environment for all
of our collections.
• Prioritise the development of our collections to facilitate
the work of our diverse users.
• Deliver improved conservation care to our collections
through the development of a modern collections
conservation facility.
To provide access to our collections and
information:
• Improve physical and virtual access to our collections
and track the impact of the use of our information.
• Complete the databasing of our collections and make
the information available in an open digital format.
• Make our collections available to researchers outside life
and earth sciences.
To develop and exploit new technologies
• Develop genomic and digital collections and
information to support our five major science
challenges.
• P rovide a national facility for the molecular, digital
and physical analysis and imaging of natural history
collections.
• Establish a collaborative network of scientific facilities to
support collections and research activities.
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FOCUS AREA 3. SCIENTIFIC ENGAGEMENT
We will take full advantage of the unrivalled opportunities that the NHM presents to engage
the public with our collections, with contemporary scientific discoveries, and with topical
debates regarding the natural world.
Our goal is to maximise the impact of our work by
using our collections and our science to inspire greater
understanding of the natural world.
This will be achieved as part of the Museum’s public
programmes, which aim to engage not only to the huge
number of visitors that come to the museum each year
but also our growing outreach networks and online
audiences.
The NHM will work in partnership to engage the public
on the scientific ideas that underlie major societal
issues - such as biodiversity loss, climate change and
environmental sustainability - and provide a trusted voice
of authority on those aspects of natural world that lie
within our fields of expertise.
Objectives:
To develop & deliver science-rich engagement
activities and material:
• Establish a series of regular events and online portals to
engage the public with the NHM’s scientific activities.
• Develop a series of substantial public engagement
initiatives focused on our five major science challenges.
To engage the public with the science underlying
major societal issues:
• Act as a hub for engaging the public with UK
biodiversity science.
• Deliver series of special events to engage the public
with topical environmental issues.
To provide expertise and evidence to support
policy development:
• Take a lead role in developing a UK strategy for
taxonomy and systematics.
• S upport international organisations in policy
development relating to our expertise.
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CHALLENGE 1. THE DIGITAL NHM
A new generation of natural history museums
The Natural History Museum houses more than 70 million
natural history specimens - digital technology offers us
the prospect of making all of that information available
to a truly global audience. Such changes promise to
revolutionise how collections are used to understand the
natural world and to address environmental issues.
To make this happen we must re-invent the way in which
museums collect and store information, the way in which
that information is made available, and the way in which
the great natural history museums of the world work
together as a global network. Our goal over the next five
years is to position the NHM at the forefront of this wave
of change to create a new generation of digital museums.
Over the next five years, we will:
• Establish high-throughput digitisation pipelines
to make large volumes of our collections and
data available digitally.
• Work with our UK partners to create national
virtual natural history collections.
• Build online taxonomy, diagnostics and
analytical tools focused on our five major
science challenges including agro-ecosystems,
parasitic diseases, and economically important
geological exploration.
We will work with our partners to create digital collections
and tools that will enable rapid taxonomy, diagnostics
and analysis of high priority groups such as type
specimens, meteorites, UK biodiversity, invasive species,
and parasites and their vectors.
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CHALLENGE 2. ORIGINS, EVOLUTION AND FUTURES
Understanding the past and predicting the future
The Earth is entering a period of unprecedented
environmental change that threatens the existence of
the global systems upon which life depends. One of the
great scientific missions is, therefore, to understand
the consequences of this change for natural and
anthropogenic ecosystems.
Natural history collections offer a unique opportunity
to address this challenge because they document the
origin and evolution of the solar system, earth and life,
and the effect of previous periods of change. Along with
our collaborators we will use our collections and our
knowledge of deep time to identify the mechanisms that
determine the impact of such changes.
Our strategic goals are to understand the processes that
underlie key transitions in the origins and evolution of the
solar system, earth and life, and to use this understanding
as a framework to predict the impact of future changes.
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Over the next five years, we will:
•U
nderstand the processes underlying key
transitions in the origins and evolution of the
solar system, earth and life.
•U
se ancient DNA technologies to unlock
the genetic information contained in our
collections.
•E
xpand our collaborative research activities
to predict the impact on ecosystems of future
environmental change scenarios.
CHALLENGE 3. BIODIVERSITY DISCOVERY
A 21st century tool kit for the exploration of life
At least 75% of life remains to be discovered. Based on
the current rate of discovery, that task will take more
than 500 years to complete. Humanity needs to develop
new approaches to the discovery of biological diversity
and to apply this information to the understanding and
preservation of natural and artificial ecosystems. Natural
history museums are the logical institutions to lead this
initiative, given their expertise in taxonomy, systematics
and understanding natural diversity.
Over the next five years, we will:
New technologies are available to help in this task,
including molecular approaches, web-based taxonomy,
informatics and citizen science. We plan to play a
principal role in driving a paradigm shift in taxonomy
by establishing an international task force of leading
institutions to bring together new technologies to
develop a modern tool kit for biodiversity discovery.
•E
xpand and intensify current work on UK
biodiversity, developing identification tools
to serve stakeholder needs and an innovative
citizen science network.
•D
evelop new molecular and digital tools to
describe biological diversity rapidly.
•M
onitor large-scale patterns and changes in
undiscovered biodiversity by applying modern
discovery tools to global networks of sites in
mega-diverse systems.
We will work with our partners to use this tool kit to
explore previously undiscovered biodiversity in megadiverse systems such as tropical forests, deep oceans and
microbial communities.
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CHALLENGE 4. NATURAL RESOURCES AND HAZARDS
Securing the future of our food, our health and our materials
The global human population is predicted to reach 10
billion within the next 50 years, a five-fold increase in
the space of a century. This population explosion poses
a series of major problems: declining food availability,
emergence of new diseases, and depletion of the scarce
elements upon which new technology is based.
The Museum’s unique scientific expertise in taxonomy,
systematics and mineralogy and collections allow us to
address these problems in novel ways, such as exploring
new sources of food by identifying the wild relatives of
crop plants that will thrive in changing environments,
predicting the spread of emergence of diseases, and
finding new ways to discover and extract scarce elements
in a sustainable fashion.
The first step in realizing these goals is to work with
our collaborators to develop new scientific approaches
and tools that will secure future supplies of food and
scare mineral resources and help identify neglected and
emerging diseases.
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Over the next five years, we will:
•E
xploit our expertise in taxonomy and
systematics to understand the wild relatives of
crop plants and their associated ecosystems to
drive the development of new approaches to
food security.
•D
evelop digital and molecular resources
to facilitate the rapid identification and
characterization of neglected and
emerging diseases.
•C
reate new tools to facilitate the identification
and commercial evaluation of new sources
of scarce mineral resources in a sustainable
fashion.
CHALLENGE 5. SCIENCE, SOCIETY & SKILLS
Empowering future generations in the science of nature
The NHM’s national and international profile provides us
with a unique opportunity to inspire the next generation
of scientists, and to equip them with the skills required to
understand natural diversity and engage with society.
Together with museums, universities and other partners
we will develop a portfolio of training programmes in
science, curation and public engagement. These courses
will integrate training in the traditional skills that underlie
our core disciplines with the new digital and molecular
technologies that are revolutionising our field.
We will also use the Museum’s national profile to explore
new ways to engage society in both contemporary
scientific debates and the processes of scientific
discovery. To do this we will build on our existing
expertise in citizen science, online blogging, and largescale public science events.
Over the next five years, we will:
•D
evelop a collaborative national programme
of training in science, curation and public
engagement.
•E
stablish an innovative citizen science
programme that combines broad public
participation with high impact, relevant science.
•D
eliver a suite of face-to-face and online events
that engages the public with contemporary
scientific questions and discoveries.
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RESOURCES AND FUNDING
To achieve our goals we need to manage effectively our existing resources, and expand and
diversify our sources of external funding.
Our most important resources are our collections and
our expert staff. In both of these areas we are making
bold moves to develop and implement new approaches
to working together across disciplines and with
collaborators.
For our collections these approaches include creating a
new Earth Sciences Centre and developing a long-term
strategy for collection storage to optimize our use of our
South Kensington site. For our people we are creating
new ways of working to promote flexible and creative
teams.
We will fund our activities by increasing our efforts
to secure support through large grants and corporate
sponsorship and philanthropic gifts.
Objectives:
To develop a professional, versatile & capable
team:
• P rovide a programme of training and mentorship
opportunities for our staff.
• Establish a fair, efficient and transparent framework for
setting and reviewing performance goals for our staff.
• Achieve an effective balance between the development
of existing staff to work in new areas and the
recruitment of external staff with new expertise.
To invest in core digital and estate infrastructure:
• Create a new Earth Sciences Centre to house our worldfamous palaeontology and mineral collections and
provide a stimulating scientific environment.
• Develop our natural history library to create a hybrid
physical-digital facility and make efficient use of space
at South Kensington.
• Develop a long-term strategy for collection storage to
optimize our use of our South Kensington site.
To provide financial stability & viability:
• Lead and participate in collaborative teams to win largescale funding for programs and consortium projects.
• P articipate and contribute to generation of commercial
income, including science consultancy.
• Mount a successful campaign to support scientific
activity through corporate sponsorship and
philanthropy.
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MEASURING SUCCESS
Scientific milestones for the next five years
We will monitor our progress against the objectives identified in this strategy using a combination of quantitative and
qualitative high-level targets. The list below highlights key areas of intent.
Scientific impact
Publish 1,000 papers in leading scientific journals
Digital accessEnsure 20 million of our specimens are available in digital formats
EngagementDeliver 1 million face-to-face science engagements with public audiences
CollectionsContinue to develop our collection as globally important resource for scientific reference
and discovery
Diagnostic toolsCreate diagnostic tools to allow rapid identification of high priority groups including UK
biodiversity, pests and invasive species, and disease agents and their vectors
Deep timeMount a major initiative to identify and describe key transitions in the origin and evolution of
life, earth and the solar system
Science & societyBring about a better understanding of science and its role in society by enriching the NHM’s
public programme
UK networkEstablish UK networks for taxonomy and systematics, citizen science, collections
management, and training
Earth SciencesCreate a new Earth Sciences Centre on our South Kensington site
FundingRaise £10 million additional funds to enable our work on our five major science challenges
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Our Patron: HRH The Duchess of Cambridge
The Natural History Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 5BD United Kingdom +44 (0)20 7942 5000 www.nhm.ac.uk