| Citation | David Cooksey read Materials Science for his first degree at Oxford and undertook post graduate research there publishing 4 papers on composite materials. He then spent 14 years in manufacturing industry and in 1981 he formed Advent, the first US style venture capital fund to invest in the UK, remaining for 26 years. The UK Government appointed him chairman of the Audit Commission (1985-94), a director of the Bank of England (1994-2005) and chairman of UK Financial Investments (2009-12) in addition to chairing a number of DTI and DH committees concerned with promoting innovation in healthcare delivery, pharmaceuticals and smaller companies.
He was appointed a Governor of the Wellcome Trust in 1995 and persuaded his fellow Governors to become involved in the development of innovation policy. He persuaded the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, in 1997 to jointly fund with Wellcome a competition to establish seed venture capital funds on university campuses across the UK. Cooksey was deeply concerned by the out of date research infrastructure of UK universities and proposed the Joint Infrastructure.
One of the fruits of the Joint Infrastructure Fund was the Diamond Light Source Project. In 2000 it was clear that the existing synchrotron light source located at Daresbury was no longer fit for purpose. Wellcome and the DTI agreed that this was worthy of investment by the Joint Infrastructure Fund. Cooksey chaired the project from inception to full operation in 2008 when he was succeeded by Lord Alec Broers.
In 2003 Cooksey was appointed chairman of the Biosciences Innovation & Growth Taskforce which published its report "Biosciences 2015" later that year. That resulted in the successful formation of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), which re-invigorated clinical research in the NHS.
In 2006 Gordon Brown commissioned the "Cooksey Review of Health Research Funding" which challenged the current structure for the funding and organisation of funding for discovery science as well as clinical development and paved the way to Accelerated Access to Pharmaceuticals. The outcome of the Cooksey Review was an increase in the funding of MRC for discovery research and NIHR for clinical research, the largest ever up to that time.
He supported the coming together of the MRC, Cancer Research (UK), the Wellcome Trust and King's, Imperial and University Colleges to form and finance the Francis Crick Institute and chaired the Crick for 9 years.
Cooksey has received Honorary Degrees from UCL, Southampton and Kingston Universities and Honorary Fellowships from Imperial, King's, Cardiff, the Academy of Medical Sciences and his Oxford College, St Edmund Hall. He was knighted in 1993 and awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 2007.
David Cooksey has made significant contributions to UK science through his role in UK venture capital investment in science, his leadership in the Diamond Light Source and the Francis Crick Institute, and his contributions to the Wellcome Trust. These achievements make him a strong candidate for election as an Honorary Fellow. |