About
A scientist by training and an enthusiast to her bones, Vivienne is a writer and broadcaster with an exceptionally wide range.
Her voice is a familiar one to Radio 4 listeners. She writes and presents many science and technology programmes for the station, including currently the multi award winning series ‘Am I normal?’ and has presented four series of ‘Inside the Ethics Committee’. She makes frequent guest appearances on television, including Question Time.
She is a prolific writer and contributes to the Times, Guardian, Mail on Sunday and an eclectic range of other papers and magazines on science and medicine. Her most recent book ‘The Truth about Hormones’ was shortlisted for the 2006 Aventis Science Prize. It has just been re-issued in paperback (click here).
She works extensively across government, particularly with the Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Scientist at the Department of Health but also with the Government Office of Science Foresight projects and with DIUS (now BIS).
She has a particular interest in promoting organ donation and was a member of the Organ Donor Taskforce, working not only on the original 2008 report but on the subsequent reports on presumed consent and on organs for non UK residents.
She is passionate about people and communication. She undertakes a great deal of hosting, facilitation, scripting and film work with science and innovation organisations (including the Royal Society, NESTA, the Technology Strategy Board and most of the research councils), with government (including the Department of Health, DCSF and BIS) and with industry (including Unilever and AstraZeneca). She was also the media facilitator for the G8’s 2006 pandemic flu exercise.
She majored in immunology and genetics at UCL and is today Vice Chairman of Council of this university, which is ranked 4th in the world. She also sits on the council of the MRC, is a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation, sat on the Duff Enquiry investigating TGN 1412 and subsequently on the Clinical Trials Expert Advisory Group of the MHRA. She is on the board of the Science Media Centre and the Cheltenham Science Festival.
In the past, she has presented Tomorrow’s World (bringing in particular the image of a mouse, with a human ear attached, to a startled world), reported for Panorama, been the columnist of the News of the World, worked with the Princess of Wales for 12 years and been the agony aunt of Good Housekeeping.
She is a part time domestic goddess with a penchant for baking, has an award winning garden which she opens once a year under the National Garden’s Yellow book scheme and lives in North London and Oxfordshire with her partner Tim Joss.
