Panel Discussion with Financial Times journalist Joe Miller and two Irish employees of BioNTech
News
16 November 2021
The Consulate General of Ireland hosted its first hybrid event – a panel discussion featuring Financial Times journalist Joe Miller and two Irish employees of BioNTech, Dr Ferdia Bates and Dr Jonathan Byrne. Consul General Anne-Marie Flynn opened a lively and stimulating discussion by welcoming the ten in-person attendees, online attendees (who were able to watch via YouTube, Zoom or Facebook) plus the three guests.
In her remarks, CG Flynn spoke about the BioNTech vaccine's contribution to Ireland's overall response to the pandemic as well as German-Irish research collaboration. The audience heard how Dr Bates and Dr Byrne both played key roles in the delivery of the vaccine – Dr Bates in the vaccine's development and Dr Byrne in overcoming some of the logistical challenges presented by the vaccine.
Both spoke about their experiences at BioNTech during the pandemic – Dr Bates told of how he first started working on a vaccine for Coronavirus in January 2020, with work continuing in 'staff bubbles' in the laboratories in Mainz throughout the lockdown periods.
Some of the hurdles faced along the way included the operational challenges of scaling up – BioNTech had been largely focused on clinical trials and smaller-scale projects up to 2020 and rapidly pivoted to a 'moonshot' project (initially codenamed Project Lightspeed) that required vastly larger resources.
Mr Miller is a Frankfurt correspondent with the Financial Times. Normally, he covers German industry broadly and had been largely unaware of BioNTech (who, despite going public in November 2019, had no dedicated correspondent from any media organisation) until the summer of 2020.
He initially wanted to write a feature article about how hard it was to develop the vaccine, but this then turned into a series of conversations with over 70 BioNTech employees and a book (titled Projekt Lightspeed in German and The Vaccine in English) which has been praised by Chancellor Angela Merkel and is already a bestseller in Germany. An English edition is to be released in December.
The event was recorded and is available to view on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRO_mSgCJVE.