President's Weekly Update
23 July 2015
We have received further information about the cuts to funding for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which were announced by the Chancellor last month in order to achieve £450 million of savings in the 2015-16 budgets for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. We estimate that the impact of these cuts on our University will be in the region of £4-5 million, some of which will need to be delivered in the current financial year. This is in addition to previous cuts to our government funding under the Quality Research (QR) core funding, additional pension costs, and prior to any further cuts that may result from the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in the autumn. The Chancellor also announced this week that he is requesting all ‘unprotected’ government departments (which includes funding for universities and research) to come forward with cuts of 25% and 40% for the CSR. This means that we will need even more focus on generating income and making savings in order to meet likely cuts while still investing to realise our ambitions.
Lemn Sissay will become the next Chancellor of our University on 1 August and will be formally installed at our Foundation Day on 14 October. Lemn came in to the University this week to meet me, our current Chancellor Tom Bloxham and the chair of our Board of Governors Anil Ruia, to talk about the role of the Chancellor. He also met with other colleagues from across the University who are working with him on arrangements for his installation ceremony. Lemn and I also talked about areas of particular interest to him which he may wish to focus on during his tenure as Chancellor.
Tom Bloxham also came in to the University to talk to Diana Hampson, Director of Estates and Facilities, about the long term plans for the development of our campus and particularly the ‘public realm’ and open spaces. Tom arrived just as we had heard the very exciting news that the University’s Whitworth had been short-listed for the RIBA Stirling Prize for the best new building of the year. The actual winner won’t be announced until 15 October, though there is already a great deal of press coverage about the shortlist. To view the short-listed buildings see:
I had a regular meeting with Dr Linda Merrick, Principal of the Royal Northern College of Music, our next-door-neighbour, to talk about our current and potential future collaborations and partnerships, in music of course, but also much wider.
I also had dinner with Professors Malcolm Press and Helen Marshall, both quite recently appointed as the Vice-Chancellors of Manchester Metropolitan University and Salford University respectively, to consider areas of common interest and complementary expertise, with inevitable focus on health given all the changes in Greater Manchester.
We held another planning meeting for ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum) which will take place next July to discuss the list of plenary lecturers to be invited. The ESOF organisers and key partners (of which the University is one) are all working through the 270 submissions for scientific sessions, which is about three times the number we can accommodate, then we will need to review the proposals for business sessions – the deadline for these is the end of this month. For further information see:
Louise Simpson from the Knowledge Partnership spent time with me discussing several presentations, including one I will deliver at the World 100 conference in Sydney in September. Louise is also leading on our External Stakeholders Review, which we conduct every two years to get the views on the University from about 70 external opinion leaders. This year’s exercise is due to report in the autumn.
It was a pleasure to meet Gerry Yeung, a former member of our Board of Governors, with Dr Lee Kai Hung, one of our alumni, whose daughter and son-in-law are also alumni. I am due to meet them all in Hong Kong in the autumn.
We also welcomed back to campus Dr Gerald Chan who is an entrepreneur with a strong interest in health start-up companies. I joined him on a tour of the research facilities at Alderley Park in Cheshire which is owned by Manchester Science Parks (MSP) shareholders, including our University.
We also visited a number of research sites here on campus, including the National Graphene Institute. I pointed out the proximity to our new engineering building (MECD) and also explained to Gerald the plans to locate the Royce Institute just behind the NGI. Having linked facilities located near to each other will have tremendous benefits for the staff engaged in the activities which take place in these buildings. The following day we heard about several of our spin-out companies which are based in the Core Technology Facility incubator, about how our innovation company UMI3 operates and about fungal research from Professor David Denning from the Institute of Inflammation and Repair. Then Gerald went back to Alderley Park to learn about some of the many spin-out companies there. We recently heard that Innovate UK has awarded a ‘Medicines Technology’ Catapult to be based at Alderley Park and we will be working closely with scientists there to develop the activities which are highly complementary to much of our own research. See:
Professor Ian Greer, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, and I met with a group of colleagues in Manchester Business School who work on various aspects of health research to consider how they can contribute to Devo Health in Greater Manchester.
I gave the opening address at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Disability Practitioners in Manchester, which is the first time that an international conference on disability has been held in the UK. This is really important for us as we have 4,500 students and 1,200 members of staff who are registered as disabled and we are recognised for our great strengths in supporting disability. The conference provided an opportunity to see how we can do even better.
I also spoke to about 800 pre-sessional students from our University Language Centre in University Place, then answered many questions - mostly about me and my career!
Some good news this week - we were awarded a grant from the Medical Research Council of about £650,000! When I say ‘we’, while I was an applicant, the grant was very much led by Dr David Brough in the Faculty of Life Sciences (FLS) with Professors Stuart Allan in FLS and Kostas Kostarelos in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk
President's Weekly Update
23 July 2015
We have received further information about the cuts to funding for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which were announced by the Chancellor last month in order to achieve £450 million of savings in the 2015-16 budgets for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. We estimate that the impact of these cuts on our University will be in the region of £4-5 million, some of which will need to be delivered in the current financial year. This is in addition to previous cuts to our government funding under the Quality Research (QR) core funding, additional pension costs, and prior to any further cuts that may result from the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in the autumn. The Chancellor also announced this week that he is requesting all ‘unprotected’ government departments (which includes funding for universities and research) to come forward with cuts of 25% and 40% for the CSR. This means that we will need even more focus on generating income and making savings in order to meet likely cuts while still investing to realise our ambitions.
Lemn Sissay will become the next Chancellor of our University on 1 August and will be formally installed at our Foundation Day on 14 October. Lemn came in to the University this week to meet me, our current Chancellor Tom Bloxham and the chair of our Board of Governors Anil Ruia, to talk about the role of the Chancellor. He also met with other colleagues from across the University who are working with him on arrangements for his installation ceremony. Lemn and I also talked about areas of particular interest to him which he may wish to focus on during his tenure as Chancellor.
Tom Bloxham also came in to the University to talk to Diana Hampson, Director of Estates and Facilities, about the long term plans for the development of our campus and particularly the ‘public realm’ and open spaces. Tom arrived just as we had heard the very exciting news that the University’s Whitworth had been short-listed for the RIBA Stirling Prize for the best new building of the year. The actual winner won’t be announced until 15 October, though there is already a great deal of press coverage about the shortlist. To view the short-listed buildings see:
I had a regular meeting with Dr Linda Merrick, Principal of the Royal Northern College of Music, our next-door-neighbour, to talk about our current and potential future collaborations and partnerships, in music of course, but also much wider.
I also had dinner with Professors Malcolm Press and Helen Marshall, both quite recently appointed as the Vice-Chancellors of Manchester Metropolitan University and Salford University respectively, to consider areas of common interest and complementary expertise, with inevitable focus on health given all the changes in Greater Manchester.
We held another planning meeting for ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum) which will take place next July to discuss the list of plenary lecturers to be invited. The ESOF organisers and key partners (of which the University is one) are all working through the 270 submissions for scientific sessions, which is about three times the number we can accommodate, then we will need to review the proposals for business sessions – the deadline for these is the end of this month. For further information see:
Louise Simpson from the Knowledge Partnership spent time with me discussing several presentations, including one I will deliver at the World 100 conference in Sydney in September. Louise is also leading on our External Stakeholders Review, which we conduct every two years to get the views on the University from about 70 external opinion leaders. This year’s exercise is due to report in the autumn.
It was a pleasure to meet Gerry Yeung, a former member of our Board of Governors, with Dr Lee Kai Hung, one of our alumni, whose daughter and son-in-law are also alumni. I am due to meet them all in Hong Kong in the autumn.
We also welcomed back to campus Dr Gerald Chan who is an entrepreneur with a strong interest in health start-up companies. I joined him on a tour of the research facilities at Alderley Park in Cheshire which is owned by Manchester Science Parks (MSP) shareholders, including our University.
We also visited a number of research sites here on campus, including the National Graphene Institute. I pointed out the proximity to our new engineering building (MECD) and also explained to Gerald the plans to locate the Royce Institute just behind the NGI. Having linked facilities located near to each other will have tremendous benefits for the staff engaged in the activities which take place in these buildings. The following day we heard about several of our spin-out companies which are based in the Core Technology Facility incubator, about how our innovation company UMI3 operates and about fungal research from Professor David Denning from the Institute of Inflammation and Repair. Then Gerald went back to Alderley Park to learn about some of the many spin-out companies there. We recently heard that Innovate UK has awarded a ‘Medicines Technology’ Catapult to be based at Alderley Park and we will be working closely with scientists there to develop the activities which are highly complementary to much of our own research. See:
Professor Ian Greer, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, and I met with a group of colleagues in Manchester Business School who work on various aspects of health research to consider how they can contribute to Devo Health in Greater Manchester.
I gave the opening address at the Annual Conference of the National Association of Disability Practitioners in Manchester, which is the first time that an international conference on disability has been held in the UK. This is really important for us as we have 4,500 students and 1,200 members of staff who are registered as disabled and we are recognised for our great strengths in supporting disability. The conference provided an opportunity to see how we can do even better.
I also spoke to about 800 pre-sessional students from our University Language Centre in University Place, then answered many questions - mostly about me and my career!
Some good news this week - we were awarded a grant from the Medical Research Council of about £650,000! When I say ‘we’, while I was an applicant, the grant was very much led by Dr David Brough in the Faculty of Life Sciences (FLS) with Professors Stuart Allan in FLS and Kostas Kostarelos in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk