 Ladies, gentlemen, honoured guests. So I'm delighted to welcome you to the 7th Annual Openness Awards. Before we begin, please note that can you keep your microphones on mute unless you're presenting and you will notice in the top left hand corner of your screen we're recording this event and it will eventually be uploaded onto the UAR website. So thank you for joining us. I know I speak for the whole of the UAR team when I say we're very disappointed that this event is not a physical one this year. But with the vaccine years being published every day then perhaps we're feeling a little more positive than we would would be otherwise and I hope that by next year we'll certainly be able to celebrate these awards and the Paget Lecture in person with a glass of wine. So we're very grateful technology exists for us to host this virtual version of the Openness Awards but we didn't feel it would be right to present the 84th Stephen Paget Memorial Lecture over Zoom. So we're thrilled that Professor Claes Danford is happy to postpone her lecture till next year when we really look forward to hearing it then. I'm Chair of UAR's Council and as Chair it's always a pleasure to see how the Concordat has developed every year. This year of course has been particularly challenging. We were disappointed to have to cancel the Signatories Workshop in May and reporting the Annual Openness Progress this summer was obviously difficult for many people. Nevertheless the publication of the 6th Annual Concordat Report today which you can now see on your slide and I believe there has been in the chat box a link to it so you can look at it at your leisure. It shows that we have done a lot in supporting Openness in animal research communications and thank you to everybody who contributed that. It's been over six years since the Concordat was launched and today's report shows that the majority of the Signatories continue to engage proactively with the media and with the general public. Engagement with schools and with local communities remains high and there continue to be opportunities for journalists, members of the public and non-research staff to step inside animal facilities which of course would never have been possible without digital technology. Online communications have become even more important this year and the report highlights the widespread use of social media and dedicated animal research websites to engage digitally and here's an example I can see the infograms coming up. The use of video and online lab tours to illustrate facilities and research has grown and more Signatories than ever are sharing their animal use statistics and providing detailed information for example on the severity and harms experienced by their animals. The UK's Concordat has also demonstrated the importance of openness in animal research communications so that we are seeing countries across Europe following our example and developing their own transparency agreements and we're also supporting colleagues in the United States, Australia and New Zealand as they create Openness initiatives and indeed in the council meeting just before this session Wendy was telling us that she's talking to the New Zealand representatives actually tomorrow about this. Once the UAR team is back in their office they will be sending out printed copies of this report until then as you've seen there's a link to it it's available on the website and it tells you how to find that in the chat box. This year we've welcomed several new Signatories to the Openness to the Concordat including the ones you can see on here, Children with Cancer UK, Kidscan Children's Cancer Research, the National Environment Research Council, Pancreatic Cancer UK, Wings for Life and most recently UKRI. We're delighted that all of these have signed the Concordat and we're also very grateful for UKRI in particular for supporting these awards. Last year we announced the first Leaders in Openness awards and the creation of Leaders in Openness allows us to recognise Signatories that are consistently achieving and embedding good practice. This standard isn't appropriate for all Concordat Signatories but those that are successful have shown that they've met good practice criteria and I'm delighted to note that the University of Edinburgh has this year joined our previous list of 13 Leaders in Openness so congratulations to the University of Edinburgh. Now the Leaders in Openness shouldn't be confused with the long-standing Openness awards which we're here for today. The Openness awards recognise excellence and innovation in communications around the use of animals in research and the winners are organisations that push the boundaries of openness and lead by example. This year rather than having prescribed award categories we invited Signatories to nominate themselves for any piece of work they've done to support Openness in animal research and to illustrate this we're now going to play a short video to highlight all the awards nominations for 2020. They've ensured that the awards encompass many facets of Openness and meet the aims of the Concordat. This year for the first time the committee made the awards on the basis of majority rather than unanimous decisions and I think that reflects really the fact that there's such a variety to choose from. It also reflects the challenges of innovation and the space where so much work has already been accomplished and inevitable differences in what ideas of that Openness actually includes. It's encouraging to realise how quickly we've reached a point where organisations are thinking about how to have tricky conversations with hard-to-reach groups where not so long ago even straightforward approaches needed quite a lot of encouragement and of course I'd like to thank you all our Concordat Signatories. Without your inspiring work in open animal research communications the Concordat would not be the success it is today. Before I hand over to the award presenters I'd like to note that if you turn out to be an award winner please feel free to take yourself off mute and say a couple of short words after you've been presented with the award and there are four awards and without further ado I'd like to welcome Professor Nick Wells who will present the first award Nick. No I have to say something first. Nick is a Cambridge University trained vet and after several years in a very mixed general practice he completed a PhD at the University of Wyoming studying comparative exercise physiology and he's held faculty positions since then at the Royal Vet College and Imperial College. In 2010 he moved back to the Royal Vet College as professor in translational medicine. His research interests include the testing of potential therapies for neuromuscular diseases and on laboratory animal welfare. He's currently chair of the Animal Sciences Group of the Royal Society of Biology. He's the co-chair of the UK Bioscience Centre Coalition and he's a member of the steering group for the Concordat on Openers in Animal Research so now over to you Nick. Thank you very much Sherry. Okay so this first award is for a university that launched a media campaign to highlight work with one of their best so one of their more unusual research species work which is aiding the global search for vaccines and treatments against COVID-19. This campaign was designed to support communications from universities UK on how universities are aiding the response to the coronavirus but this campaign aimed to reach beyond the usual science or medical story audience. Their campaign included pictures and details of the animals involved. They explained the nature of procedures undertaken and why animals are important to the research specifically focusing on COVID-19. The story was shared across social media and also received excellent coverage in traditional media and that coverage included a particularly well reported item on BBC TV news. The Openers Awards judging committee felt that the university communications team showed an excellent grasp of news creating a compelling piece that will help many people to better understand the use of animals in research. Their approach is bold, courageous and relevant. They're willing to be questioned about their research harnessing social media effectively at a time when people are curious and engaging extensively online. While this university has developed a similar story in the past their engagement with the media remains leading for the research sector. The judges are pleased but unsurprised to see that this approach is resulting in excellent news coverage. So as you probably guessed congratulations to the University of Reading for effectively engaging with the media on how your llamas are used in COVID-19 research and if somebody from the University of Reading would like to say something that would be great. Thanks Dominic. I'm Pete Castle. I work in the communications team at the University of Reading. I don't know if any of my scientific colleagues are here to also accept the award on behalf of the university but if unless anyone wants to pop up then I guess it's me but thanks very much. It's a great surprise and a real honor to be to have an award for the second year running involving llamas. I think the trick then is just to do research with llamas I think is the answer for everybody and also I think I should just say the real award here is for our scientific colleagues who work on large animals at the university's farms who are an absolutely splendid bunch of people to work with who are always open to new ideas and to working with me and my colleagues in the communications sort of function of the university. They're the ones that actually do all this work along with colleagues in the Reading School of Pharmacy and elsewhere the School of Agriculture and it's because they're able to come up with these kind of or willing to accept these kind of crazy mancap ideas that we're able to have to do some good stories around it so thanks very much and also thanks to Jeremy the llama who started this all off yesterday and who may or may not have been named after Jeremy Pearson. I hope he wasn't but I'd be delighted if he were he deserves an honor certainly but anyway so thanks Pete and your colleagues at the Reading World done and thanks to Nick for introducing you and awarding the prize now. The second award tonight that'll be presented by Professor Matt Geel. Matt's been working with Xenopus Frogs since starting his PhD in 1984 at King's College London. He's mainly focused on gene regulation mechanisms and he's established the European Xenopus Resource Resource Centre at Portsmouth where he's Professor of Developmental Genetics. This centre supports more than 200 biomedical research labs around the world with molecular and animal resources and the staff also developed new genetically modified frogs. They introduced new research techniques and improved frog welfare. Recent advances in gene editing have transformed the frog tadpole into a powerful tool for studying rare genetic diseases and this is now the focus of Matt's lab so over to you Matt I hope I can see the castles on the screen here yes here he is Matt thank you okay thank you very much Jeremy. So in 2019 this institution developed a teacher's toolkit to raise awareness about the use of animals in research and the role of animal care staff in providing good welfare. The free toolkit which is linked to the curriculum was designed for teachers with pupils age 19 sorry 9 to 14 years old to download and use in the classroom. It supports classes to explore the scientific method using a series of simple pupil guided experiments with earthworms. The toolkit highlights the importance of studying animal behaviour. It introduces the three Rs and gives teachers and pupils practical experience of designing their own investigation using earthworms. Additional support for teachers is delivered via CPD sessions and the toolkit's been downloaded for use with young people across the world including Europe, Africa, South America and North America. Although the use of unprotected animals in classroom demonstration should not be taken lightly this toolkit encouraged sensitivity in working with living animals to study behaviour. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic the institution then adapted the toolkit for use by families at home and it has been downloaded for use with over four and a half thousand young people across the UK. The openness awards judging committee felt that this was an innovative and exciting piece of schools engagement which will encourage young people to think differently about animal behaviour and how we understand it. Congratulations to the Roslin Institute for creating a toolkit to support school engagement on the use of animals in science, welfare and the three Rs. So someone from the Roslin Institute would like to say a couple of words please go ahead. Hi I'm Hazel Lambert Public Engagement Manager for the University of Edinburgh. Thank you so much we're absolutely delighted. My colleagues Jane and Nicola are the people who put this whole thing together and they are on the calls. So Jane if you want to switch your camera on and let us see you come and say hello. Hi I was just trying to get a virtual background on there. Hello everyone thank you so much for this and for the recognition of of what we've done. We have had some really excellent feedback from the primary school teachers we've engaged with. It's been a really great opportunity to engage younger children with the idea of using animals in research and it's really through the toolkit we've really empowered some of our primary school teachers locally and all over the world to really sort of use the scientific method and think about how animals are used. So thank you so much. And I just have to say everyone on the call look up the Easter Bridge Science Outreach Centre their work is fantastic and Jane and Nicola are doing an outstanding job with their online engagement. Thanks thanks Hazel thank you everyone. Thank you Hazel thank you Jane congratulations and thank you Matt for introducing that. Now the third award tonight will be presented by Dr Sarah Bailey. Sarah works at the University of Bath in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology. Her research is in understanding how the brain responds to stress and how we can use that knowledge to develop new and better antidepressant medicines. At the University of Bath Sarah is an openness champion supporting the Concordat on openness and she's the Secretary for Non-clinical External Affairs at the British Association for Psychopharmacology and she's Vice President-elect for Engagement at the British Pharmacological Society so over to you Sarah. There you go, must remember to unmute. Hello I'm delighted to have been invited to present this award, award number three awards are made in no particular order. This university has created a curiosity-driven crafting activity to help members of the public think deeply about the complexities of creating and caring for research animals. The activity is led by researchers and was designed to be highly accessible to encourage diverse participation and by adults and children from a range of backgrounds. Those taking part in the activity work in small groups and used felt and other materials to make a mouse over about 20 minutes. During the activity questions and experiences were exchanged between participants and researchers introducing complex ideas around the care of laboratory mice, institutionalization, scientific process and uncertainty. The topics discussed were participant-led, included personalized medicine, colony management, animal transport, animal sentience, breeding, housing, rehoming, caring, professional roles and legislation. At its core the project uses a simple creative activity to draw attention to more complex ideas about the relationships between people and the laboratory animals. The workshop was launched in 2018 and has featured at numerous science festivals and adult events, teaching seminars and international conferences. During 2020, like many of us, they moved to a virtual workshop allowing the team to work in a COVID safe way. The team hoped to offer a free toolkit that they will develop for stakeholders to use in their own engagement. Initial concerns among the judges about trivializing animal research were balanced by the innovative approach of this project, which gives the public a window into some of the more conceptually difficult discussions around laboratory animal welfare. For me, I love the simplicity and directness of this project. If you want to talk to the public about animal research, you need to make time for difficult conversations and this activity provides engagement, allows for diversity and inclusion and critically the lay critique from true non-specialists and I really want a felt mouse. So my heartfelt congratulations to the University of Southampton for their mouse exchange public engagement activity. And if somebody is online from the University of Southampton, they would like to take themselves off mute and say a few words. That would be great. Hello. Hello Emma. Hiya. We're absolutely over the moon about this. There's a team of us that have worked so hard to produce this and we are not researchers or actively involved in animal research with social scientists, we're humanities experts who've come together, who've wanted to work with the industry and I'm so thankful for the fact that they've allowed us to work with them for the research gathering aspects that we've had to do to understand more about this world of animal research so we can find a way to find a new way to talk to people about animal research. Let me please thank my team. Sarah Perez who is the main researcher on the project and and also Bentley Cudgington who's the creative facilitator for the Welcome Pundit Animal Research Project, you know Welcome Are Our Funders here and also Paul Hurley who's a performance artist community artist who's also brought so much to this project. Also let me thank the wider Annex team, we're from the Animal Research Nexus and we're funded by Welcome for five years and I guess we're on a big massive project and trying to bring the social sciences expertise and the humanities to bear on kind of changing the ways in which we communicate about animal research. So yeah thank you very much understanding animal research for responding to us. I guess Steve Dawney also who's our public engagement person at the University of Southampton. He's always been a real champion of when we brought the animal that we brought the mouse exchange to the Southampton Science Festivals. He's always kind of been a real cheerleader for it and made us realize how unique and offering it was which we really appreciate. It's always hard to kind of understand exactly where you've got to make really novel and he kind of definitely has helped me understand that and we really hope that many of you out there will have a chance to take part in the mouse exchange at some point in the future and make your own felt mouse which you can see some examples there on the screen now. So thank you again very much from all of us at the University of Southampton. Thank you Emma, congratulations and also thanks to Sarah for introducing and awarding the award to you. So the final award is going to be presented by Dr Jill Fleetwood. Jill trained as a cardiovascular pharmacologist and spent more than 15 years as a bench scientist developing and characterizing in vivo models. While working for GlaxoSmithKline she led the company's UK ethical review process and helped review the welfare standards of organizations carrying out animal studies on behalf of GSK in Europe and in North America. She's represented GSK and the wider pharmaceutical industry in discussions about the application of animal welfare legislation in UK and Europe. She chaired the ABPI Animal Research and Welfare Expert Network and she was co-chair of the EFPIA Research and Animal Welfare group. Between 2011 and 2015 she was the industry co-chair for the UK Biosciences Coalition. Since retiring from GSK in 2015 Jill maintains an interest in responsible animal research as a member of our council and as the ex and an external member of the AWIRV of a small university. So over to you Jill to present the final award. Thank you Jeremy. Okay right these two institutes have worked together to create a citizen science project which generated scientifically useful data whilst operating opening a dialogue with members of the public about the need for animals in research and the nature of the work done with those animals. Their project is the first time a citizen science approach has been used in laboratory animal science. In this project members of the public watch six second video clips of mice in the home cage analyzer identifying and recording the activity they observe. The system allows mice to be studied in their home cage minimizing any stress associated with moving animals to a test area. The system produces a huge amount of video data capturing mouse behavior which must be annotated to train algorithms and enable automatic computer recognition of key mouse behaviors such as climbing, eating and drinking. More than 4,000 volunteers registered to participate in this project between them logging 211,000 behavioral events since its launch in August 2019. Participants also received detailed information on why mice are used in medical research, the three hours impact of the project and the importance of developing a better understanding of mouse behavior. The judging committee commended the rich and innovation of the project which engaged many members of the lay public in rodent welfare research supporting both openness and the human use of animals in research. This is a huge piece of work which has involved a great many people allowing them to see the realities of animal research themselves. Congratulations to the NC3Rs and the Mary Lyons Centre on your secret life of mouse citizen science project. So if someone from either or both of the NC3Rs and the Mary Lyons Centre would like to say a few words please turn on your microphone and video. So Sonya should be turning on her microphone from the Mary Lyons Centre but we're very thrilled for this, it's excellent. I don't know if you guys can see me, I've only got a small screen but we're absolutely delighted to receive this award and it's a real testament to the NC3Rs and the Mary Lyons Centre, the commitment that everybody has to really engaging the public with some very very different questions really putting the reality out there and I say on behalf of the entire team that we are very very grateful that this hardware has been recognized and really to the citizens for making it possible and this is really a very exciting time for us because we've only just started to analyze the data from this project and you can imagine it's a vast amount of data and so I won't take very much more of your time and just invite my colleagues from the NC3Rs who support this project from the word go to maybe share this moment with us, thank you. Yeah just on behalf of the NC3Rs it's been an absolute pleasure to work with the whole team, it's been a long road to get it approved and to get it online but the response has just been incredible and it's been great to introduce all of this amazing footage to people so they can really get an insight into the lives of the vice and thank you to everyone who's also helped answer all the questions that's come through as well, there's been some really interesting dialogue been happening as well so yeah congratulations everyone and thank you so much for collaborating with us on such a brilliant project. Congratulations Emma, congratulations Sonia and your teams, thank you Jill for introducing the citation for that award. So thank you to all presenters, congratulations to all the openness award winners. The UAR team will be in touch with you all shortly to organize the shipment of your trophies, as you can see these are very large and rather precious so I don't know whether we can really afford to ship them but no expense will be spared, you will get them in due course. We hope you'll be able to join us in person at the event next December rather than as we're doing it now so we can congratulate you all over again but in the meantime I have only a couple of things I think I need to say first of all thanks to all the nice messages in the chat box showing that you're all highly engaged with this, I see there are over 103 participants on this call which is super and given the trying and rather difficult circumstances with all of this virtual presentation I particularly want to thank the whole of the UAR team who not only have put this together and run the whole thing but have worked tirelessly throughout the year to make sure that UAR succeeds and the Concordat on openness has progressed. So in the meantime I hope you managed to have as festive a possible as possible Christmas and New Year given the circumstances so thank you all very much and goodbye.