Lord Patrick Vallance
UK Minister for Science; formerly Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK government.
Last refreshed: 15 June 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can Vallance translate science diplomacy into deployed spinout capital outside the Golden Triangle?
Timeline for Lord Patrick Vallance
Announced Midlands Mindforge's first deployments at the UK Global R&D and Science Investment Summit
UK Startups and Innovation: Midlands fund writes its first cheques- Who is Lord Vallance and what is his role in the UK government?
- Baron Vallance of Balham is Minister of State for Science, Research and Nuclear under Keir Starmer's Labour government, appointed July 2024 after serving as Chief Scientific Adviser from 2018 to 2023.Source: Wikipedia / gov.uk
- What did Patrick Vallance do during the COVID-19 pandemic?
- As Chief Scientific Adviser, Vallance co-led the government's scientific communication throughout the pandemic, appearing at Downing Street briefings alongside Chris Whitty. His diary notes submitted to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry described frank assessments of Boris Johnson's grasp of the Science.Source: UK COVID-19 Inquiry
- What is the Midlands Mindforge spinout fund that Vallance announced?
- Midlands Mindforge is a £30m spinout investment vehicle backed by eight Midlands universities (Aston, Birmingham, Cranfield, Keele, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, Warwick), UKRI, DSIT and the Rigby Group, which deployed its first three investments in June 2026.Source: UKRI / TheBusinessDesk
- What was Patrick Vallance's career before becoming a government adviser?
- Vallance was President of R&D at GlaxoSmithKline from 2012 to 2018, overseeing the company's drug pipeline, having previously been a professor at UCL Medical School researching vascular biology and nitric oxide signalling.Source: Wikipedia
Background
Lord Patrick Vallance (Baron Vallance of Balham, KCB, FRS, FMedSci) served as HM Government Chief Scientific Adviser from April 2018 to April 2023, one of the longest tenures in that post. He was appointed Minister of State for Science, Research and Nuclear under Prime Minister Keir Starmer in July 2024, taking a life peerage to enable the role. Before government he was President of R&D at GlaxoSmithKline from 2012 to 2018, following sixteen years in academic medicine at UCL and St George's where his research established nitric oxide's role in vascular biology.
Vallance became one of the two most visible scientific figures of the COVID-19 pandemic, appearing alongside Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty at Downing Street briefings from March 2020. His contemporaneous diary notes, revealed at the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, offered frank assessments of ministerial decision-making and drew significant public attention.
As Minister for Science, Vallance announced at the UK Global R&D and Science Investment Summit on 10 June 2026 that Midlands Mindforge had deployed its first investments, unlocking an initial £30m from a consortium of eight Midlands universities backed by UKRI, DSIT and the Rigby Group . The announcement marked the first multi-university Midlands spinout fund to reach deployment, part of a broader government push to break the Oxford-Cambridge-London concentration of UK spinout capital. His DSIT portfolio directly oversees the Digital and Technologies Sector Plan, the Intellectual Property Office, ARIA, and the £1.1bn AI Hardware Plan.