Local Euro MP Sharon Bowles highlights the need for more young scientists

5.30.00pm GMT Mon 14th Dec 2009

Sharon Bowles MEP supports scientific innovation

Lib Dem MEP for the South East (including Oxfordshire) Sharon Bowles is this week highlighting the need for more young people to take up maths, science and engineering.

Herself a semiconductor physicist who did early work aimed at harnessing solar energy, Sharon said: 'It is really disappointing that while young people care so much about the environment, we seem unable to inspire more of them to equip themselves with the engineering and science tools that will help to deliver solutions."

Sharon, who now chairs the European Parliament's powerful Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, said: "My background in science, engineering and as a patent attorney dealing with high tech industry, has been an enormous help to me since becoming an MEP back in 2005."

"With recent course cuts and the closure of Reading University's renowned Physics Department next year, it seems that the sciences are suffering. Having followed events in Copenhagen this week, it is clear to me that there needs to be more investment in science education, not less."

Sharon, who read Chemical Physics with Maths at Reading University, said: "I hope more young people take up maths and science so that departments such as at Reading are given more support. It is imperative that we make the sciences as much an educational priority as other subjects."