David Williamson’s June 6,2012 article on the Wales Online website features a very provocative opinion about the UK and its nanotechnology efforts,

THE UK Government has failed to grasp the multi-billion-pound potential of nanotechnology and has not acted to protect us from its potential risks, a Cardiff University expert has warned.

Steven Vaughan, who teaches at the university’s law school, gave a scathing account of the Westminster Government’s approach to the field of micro-engineering. [emphasis mine]

In a lecture at the literary festival at Hay-on-Wye he claimed it had failed to capture commercial opportunities and had not put in place regulations to ensure public safety.

I was a bit surprised to see that this lecture took place at a literary festival. The connection was not immediately apparent to me but I see that the festival ( Imagine the World, May 31 – June 10, 2012) is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a “stunning programme of international writers and thinkers.” I went on to look at the festival’s programme categories and found this,

• Art & Design
• Business
• Children
• Classics
• Comedy
• Entertainment
• Family
• Film
• Food
• Green & Nature
• History
• Literature
• Medicine
• Music
• Performance
• Poetry
• Politics
• Science
• Stage & Screen
• Thinking and
• World Affairs

I hope Vancouver’s (Canada) Writers & Readers Festival takes a leaf out of this book (pun intended).

Given his comments, I was a little curious about Stephen Vaughan and found his Cardiff University webpage,

Steven Vaughan holds a first class bachelors degree in Jurisprudence from Oxford University, where he studied at Corpus Christi College. On completion of his Legal Practice Course diploma, Steven joined Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer where he qualified as a solicitor in August 2005 into the firm’s Environment, Planning and Regulatory team. There, his practice focused on the provision of environmental law advice in the context of multinational mergers and acquisitions, project financings and real estate matters. In the summer of 2006, Steven joined the London office of Latham & Watkins LLP as an attorney in their Environment, Land and Resources group. He has represented clients in the renewable energy, paper, waste and manufacturing sectors as well as numerous private equity and other financial institutions.

…

Having completed a MSc in Research Methods at Cardiff University in 2007 – 2008, Steven is currently undertaking a PhD with Professor Robert Lee of Cardiff Law School, looking at EU chemicals law and the Regulation commonly known as REACH.

…

Steven teaches on the Company Law undergraduate module at Cardiff Law School and lectures Environmental Law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the School of Earth Sciences, the School of Engineering and the School of City and Regional Planning, all at Cardiff University. He also lectures on planning law, banking law and project finance law.

It looks to me as if Vaughan has a grand total of two years work experience while spending the better of his adult life as a student. I did look up the event description for Vaughan’s talk and I’m not sure, given the information on his university webpage, how Vaughan qualifies as an expert on nanotechnology or any other emerging technology while the reference to micro-engineering in the context of a lecture on nanotechnology, as per Williamson’s article, seems a bit odd.