New EU science chief warns of drop-off in UK research funding

Mauro Ferrari joins organisation at a tricky time and says his focus is on identifying 'breakthrough people'

At the age of 43, Mauro Ferrari astonished his peers by giving up his career as a highly regarded professor of engineering at the University of California in Berkeley to enrol at medical school.

He had been driven to find a cure for the cancer that had killed his wife at the age of 32, leaving him alone with three traumatised children. "I feel comfortable talking about this now - I didn't for years," he says. "Everyone has got a wound that pushes them to do better."