 Dear honored guests, it is genuinely my honor to have you here tonight and to welcome you to the 10th annual Openness Awards and the 86th Stephen Padgett Memorial Lecture, which will be given tonight by Professor Amrita Alawalia. So I'd like to recognize two people who have been pivotal to the work of UAR and the Concordat. My predecessor is chair at UAR, Jeremy Pearson and Jeff Watts, chair of the Concordat Steering Group. Neither of them are here today, but we can embarrass Jeremy a little bit because this is being recorded. Jeremy stepped down this chair this year and while we gave him a proper send-off at the UAR annual general meeting, I would like to thank him for being a fantastic host for this event, providing a steady guiding hand and for leading the UAR council with impeccable grace and style. So I'm trying to emulate that a little bit here today. During his role as chair, he and the council have overseen the continuing importance of UAR activities and supporting the broader community, particularly when the importance of animal research is being questioned or challenged and in reminding the animal research community to continue to do all that they can to engage with the public in openness. And so doing Jeremy's leadership has overseen the UAR activities to flourish strongly within the UK and also to grow internationally, including with Bella Lear, now leading UAR Oceania. So thank you, Jeremy. I would also like to thank Jeff Watts, who's stepping down from his role as chair of the Concordat Steering Group. So Jeff has been chair since the steering group was set up in 2012 to oversee the development of the Concordat. Jeff's experience has been formative to the development since the beginning of the process. During the very first meeting, he made recommendations about the form that the Concordat could take, which influenced the final product after months of due process. Since then, he has led the steering group to review the annual report and provide oversight on the direction the Concordat would take. So on behalf of everyone at UAR, I would like to say a huge thank you to Jeff and they'll show their appreciation with a gift that they can give to him. But thank you, Jeff. So as we approach the 10-year anniversary, this is a celebration for us about the Concordat on openness being launched. It's a good time to reflect on how we got here. In 2012, opinion polling showed that the public wanted to know more about animal research. In October of the same year, a declaration on openness on animal research was signed by over 40 organizations involved in the biosciences in the UK. These organizations committed to developing a Concordat, setting out how they would be more open about the ways in which animals are used in scientific, medical and veterinary research in the UK. In 2013, UAR conducted two pieces of public research to reflect and incorporate the views of the public in the wider community. So this public dialogue with Ipsos-Mauri was led to understand what people in the UK think constitutes openness and transparency with regards to animal research. And that would guide the drafting of the Concordat. In May 2014, the Concordat on openness was finally launched with 72 signatories. And it stands as a publicly acceptable pledge to be more open about research involving animals. Now nearly 10 years later, 125 organizations, almost double what it started with, have committed to enhancing their animal research communications in the UK. The Concordat has also given rise to a further nine transparency agreements across the world, with an 11th agreement coming soon in the US. In celebration of the Concordat's 10th anniversary, UAR is holding an inaugural conference dedicated to openness and animal research next year. The conference is a celebration of openness in the UK and abroad, and we absolutely cannot wait for it to bring together the global openness community and to grow it. I want to thank the conference organizers and the committee who has been reviewing submissions for creating a strong and exciting agenda. This will give the attendees an opportunity to hear from those who are pushing openness within their organizations and embedding change within the sector. Registrations open soon, and we hope to see many of you there at the conference next May. Today we have published the 9th Annual Concordat Report, and the Council was pleased to see the progress the Concordat signatories were making. The information made available online through websites and social media continues to grow, and I'm delighted to see signatories are moving past the restrictions of the COVID pandemic, with a clear return to in-person public engagement events whenever possible. This year we welcomed two new signatories to the Concordat, and we're delighted that the University of Edinburgh was successful in applying to retain its status as leader in openness. Leaders in openness is how we recognize those signatories that are consistently achieving and embedding good practice, and that can come from anywhere. The next round of leaders in openness nominations will begin early 2024, and we really look forward to senior nominations and applications. We also encourage nominations for the Sir Colin Blakemore Memorial Award. Before we move on to the awards and lecture, I would like to recognize and thank the sponsors for the generous support this evening. This year I'm delighted to welcome Emerita Alualia, tonight's pageant lecturer to present the inaugural Professor Sir Colin Blakemore Memorial Award. Thank you, Emerita. Professor Sir Colin Blakemore was a staunch supporter of openness in animal research, and he certainly didn't shy away from talking about his work. He was the recipient of UAR's very first Openness Award in 2014, and his bravery in continuing to talk about the importance of research using animals in the face of really rather severe animal rights extremism that was directed personally at him was an inspiration. In memory of Professor Blakemore with the blessing of his family and with funding from the Biomedical Research Education Trust, the Professor Sir Colin Blakemore Memorial Award recognizes an individual from a signatory organization whose work to improve public understanding of how and why animals are used in the UK for research. Talking about animal research is actually a rather tricky thing to do. It's not so easy, and certainly, as I mentioned previously, it requires bravery, especially when speaking about this subject is not actually part of one's job description. This particular award is about recognizing individuals who are supporting openness by putting their heads above the parapet, being brave and doing something in their own name. There are hundreds of individuals doing lots of small things to push openness forwards who aren't being recognized for their hard work, and this award is about correcting that and recognizing those individuals. UAR is delighted to award the inaugural Professor Sir Colin Blakemore Memorial Award to Amy Patterson. Amy is the small animal facility supervisor at the Babram Institute. She was nominated by her colleague Louisa Wood for her leadership in coordinating the facility's participation in an Instagram takeover for UAR. Amy enthusiastically embraced the opportunity and brought colleagues together to share the work of the institute. The UAR team were particularly impressed by how Amy opened the doors to the institute's labs and herself to a very public and uncontrolled audience. Again, a very tricky thing to do when speaking about animal research. Amy put her name and face on social media in a way that many people are not comfortable doing. They're all scared of trolls, and it seems that, obviously, Amy isn't scared of anything. We are thrilled to see more technicians taking courageous steps to engage with the public, and enthusiastic and passionate people like Amy exemplify the courage and dedication that are the spirit of this award. Please join me in congratulating Amy Patterson. Well done, Amy. Congratulations. I'll shake your hand. Thank you, Amrita. Congratulations, Amy. As we move on to the Openness Awards, I would like to thank my fellow Openness Awards judges for their time and thoughtful deliberations. They ensure that the awards encompass many facets of openness and meet the aims of the Concordat. Tonight, we will be presenting two Openness Awards. For the first Openness Award, I would like to invite James Bussell, Director of Biomedical and Veterinary Services at the University of Oxford, to present. Thank you, James. So, our first Openness Award goes to a university that is using social media to raise awareness of laboratory animal welfare and to apply the voices of the technologists responsible for it. As part of the IT Tech Month, the university developed a series of content for Twitter, giving voice to animal technologists through quotes describing their experiences and feelings about working in animal research and their pride of working within the industry. The success of this campaign was followed by a takeover of the UAR Instagram account for Mycin Research Week, a team that combined animal unit staff, a PhD student and a senior research opened the door of the university's breeding unit, explaining how Mycin cared for, how they are used in research at the university and how research is regulated. While the Openness Award judges had previously awarded an Instagram takeover, what made this takeover stand out was that it was a technician led and bought in people from different roles. The takeover showed a variety of content and clearly required a lot of effort to put together. Please join me in congratulating Imperial College London for the Mycin Research Week Instagram takeover. Thank you, James. Congratulations, Imperial. For tonight's second Openness Award, I would like to invite Mark Downs, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Biology to present. Thank you very much. Thank you for UAR for the opportunity to do this. Our second Openness Award goes to the university which recognises the need for internal engagement through a variety of approaches, particularly through efforts made to survey students to understand the perspective on openness and what the university can do to better support this. The university ran a survey of its student population to discover where its openness programme was in need of improvement and how that could be achieved. The survey delivered clear recommendations on how to enhance openness in webpages, tutorials and practicals in the biosciences. The survey responses were highlighted in a poster presentation a dedicated three hours openness event held at the university's annual research conference. The judges felt that this was not only a learning opportunity for how the university can improve, but also an opportunity that other signatories can learn from. Please join me in congratulating the University of Hertfordshire for its internal engagement with students to better support openness.