President's weekly update

24 July 2014

Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC) has just announced an important new project called ‘WellNorth’. The project involves £9 million of funding from Public Health England to be matched by local authorities across the North. It will be led by MAHSC initially in Greater Manchester and then rolled out across the North via the Northern Health Science Alliance. WellNorth attacks the roots of deprivation, ill health and worklessness through community action. It is a massively ambitious and important programme, inspired and led by Aidan Halligan and supported by Peter Noble, both of whom are based in MAHSC.

Professor Luke Georghiou (Vice-President for Research and Innovation), Sir Howard Bernstein (Chief Executive of Manchester City Council) and I hosted a dinner for key individuals across Greater Manchester to tell them about EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) to be held in Manchester in 2016. There was fantastic enthusiasm and more ideas than we can possibly deal with.

It was wonderful to hear from Andrew Amara one of the first Alan Gilbert Equity and Merit Scholars from Uganda who I met when he was in Manchester. Andrew is an architect and urban planner. He has earned a place on the prestigious Young African Leaders Initiative in the USA, based in Atlanta, which he described as a four month long programme packed into two. He wrote as he was heading to Washington to the pinnacle of the programme at which the attendees would be addressed by President Obama. He wrote that he has been able to find a low cost and sustainable solution to replacing poor quality shelters that he will now take back to Uganda.

I am working with representatives from Manchester City Council, Cheshire East Council, Manchester Science Parks and BioNow to identify the strengths in Life Sciences (spanning all areas of biology, medicine, health, agriculture and environment and including academic and commercial activities) across Greater Manchester and Cheshire East, so that we can develop a strategy for future collaboration and success.
I met several senior military officers who are taking a course at Manchester Business School (MBS) to help them consider careers when they leave the services. They were highly complimentary about the course and the University.

Professor Sir Mark Walport, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser (and my co-chair of the Council for Science and Technology), visited Manchester to discuss research activities in materials, nuclear technologies and ageing, together with other northern universities. Professor Colin Bailey (Vice-President and Dean of Engineering and Physical Sciences), Diana Hampson (Director of Estates and Facilities) and I took him on a quick tour of some of our facilities before discussing current research strengths, collaborations and industrial partnerships.

At senior staff meetings this week we reviewed our financial performance, (including the need to meet our future investment plans and future challenges), plans to expand distance learning, ‘benchmarking’ against comparable universities and future plans for the next academic year. It did feel a bit like ‘the end of term’.

I know that many staff will soon be attending conferences, taking research leave or enjoying a well-earned rest. I will send a short message next week if there are key items to report, but then I will only write a message over the summer if there are updates to give on major items, until early September when my weekly messages will resume.

I know that many staff will continue to work hard over the summer months on research, developing new teaching and other initiatives and keeping our core functions running. In particular in August very many staff will be involved in confirmation and clearing, which is a vast operation when A level results come out and we receive literally thousands of calls and enquiries from prospective students.

I will be taking a couple of weeks holiday in Sweden, where it has been so hot and dry that the fruit is shrivelling and the grass is brown.