CERI Strategic trip to the UK

In June 2025, Prof Wim de Villiers and Dr Richard Gordon visited the UK (London and Cambridge) to explore a number of collaboration opportunities. These included the pharmaceutical sector (Glaxo Smith Kline), funding agencies (Wellcome Trust, Children’s Innovation Fund Foundation (CIFF)) as well as several UK funding agencies such as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

Some of the highlights of the trip included a lunch and discussion with a Wellcome Trust Senior executive team as well as a trip to the House of Commons at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster where the team presented data on the FCDO Collaboration programme to a number of representatives of the Commonwealth International Development sub committee of the UK Government. The meeting was also attended by several members of the Wellcome Sanger Genomic Surveillance senior management team and in-depth discussions were had on how the CERI-GSU program could be scaled.

Photo:  (from left to right) – Saheer Gharbia (Wellcome Sanger), Richard Gordon, Dr. Brian Mathew, MP for Melksham and Devizes (for the International Development Committee), Wim de Villiers, Janet Horton (Wellcome Sanger).