President's Weekly Update
2 July 2015
We heard the fantastic news that our Whitworth Art Gallery has won the national Museum of the Year award. Congratulations to Maria Balshaw and her team! You can find out more about this at:
The Distinguished Achievement Awards ceremony is one of our most important annual events and was held last week in the Whitworth Hall. This is when we recognise our most remarkable staff and students. Awards are presented to staff in our support services (individuals and teams), teachers and researchers, and undergraduate and postgraduate students. It was attended by the award winners, their nominators, supporters and guests and was followed by a lunch for all attendees. You can find out more about the winners at:
We also learnt that we have been awarded ‘major centre’ status by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), as one of only three in the country, along with Oxford and Cambridge. This will bring a further £5million in funding to the University from CRUK over the next two years. It was awarded to the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, which is the very successful partnership between the University, The Christie and CRUK, led by Professor Nic Jones, and is yet another success story for cancer research in Manchester.
It was a great pleasure to attend an event in London hosted by Lord David Alliance at his office in the spectacular Spencer House. David is a major donor to the University and hosted the event for about 70 friends and supporters of the University to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Manchester Business School. Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Manchester Business School, and I both spoke and we showed the short film on graphene:
Lord Jim O’Neill, who holds an honorary chair with us and is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, gave his time generously to meet with me and a number of our staff to discuss commercialisation of graphene and opportunities in health. Jim was given a tour of our National Graphene Institute (NGI) and met both Professors Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov. The NGI, although not quite yet fully open, was busy with participants from National Graphene Week which we hosted and which I gather was a great success.
Jim also co-hosted a dinner in London with me for senior alumni and major donors to the University and gave a fantastic background to the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. This was followed by a discussion on how we are contributing to the Northern Powerhouse, then more generally on how our alumni and friends can support the key missions of the University.
We had a visit from a high level delegation of about 40 senior officials from China, including the Chinese Ambassador to the UK and the Chinese Consul General. In the morning, they all visited our National Graphene Institute (NGI), where I gave a presentation on the University and Professor Kostya Novoselov talked about graphene and its applications. In the afternoon, they visited our Manufacturing Technology Research Laboratory in the Sackville Street Building before going on to the Manchester City Football Academy.
I met another two Ambassadors together - the British Ambassador to Korea and the Korean Ambassador to the UK, both of whom visited the University. We discussed how we can forge stronger links with Korea in research, student mobility and business. Both Ambassadors then met with a group of our Korean students.
At a meeting of the group taking forward part of the ‘Devo Health’ agenda, we agreed on priorities for delivery, branding, stakeholders and possible launch of the Academic Health Science System in Greater Manchester.
Professor Clive Agnew, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students, and I had one of our regular meetings with Charlie Cook, General Secretary of the Students’ Union. Sadly, this was our last meeting with Charlie, who has done a great job. We were joined by her successor, Naa Acquah, who has just taken over. We discussed how we work closely with the Students’ Union and talked about likely challenges over the next year.
While in London for various other meetings, including the Council of the Royal Society, I met some of our senior alumni in one-to-one meetings to talk about their support for the University - quite successful!
It was a great privilege to attend an event at the Guildhall in London where the speaker was Bill Clinton. He lived up to all I had heard about him being a charismatic and engaging speaker. He talked about ‘inclusive capitalism’, which he said meant distributing wealth but not losing profit; avoiding ‘them and us’ cultures, while not losing identities; how companies can make money while still improving the benefit of their lowest paid workers, engaging their local communities and being more sustainable; and how businesses need to think about ‘stakeholders’ rather than shareholders. Quite a remarkable line up on the front row: the Lord Mayor of London; the head of Rothschilds; Carlos Slim (said to be the richest man in the world); Mark Carney (Governor of the Bank of England) and Ratan Tata (head of the Tata family).
Professor Colin Stirling visited us from Australia where he is now President and Vice-Chancellor of Flinders University. Colin was our Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students for several years. It was clear that Australian universities are facing exactly the same challenge as us: diminishing government funding, ever increasing demands on our outcomes and further global competition.
We held what may have been the last meeting of the group I co-chair, which was established to identify the strengths in Life Sciences (encompassing all areas of health) across Greater Manchester and Cheshire East and to develop a future strategy. The group was established to follow on from the Task Force that looked at the consequences of AstraZeneca leaving Alderley Park in Cheshire. In fact the Alderley Park site is doing extremely well and we agreed that our group now has to come under the wider ‘Devo Health’ and the Academic Health Science System work in the region.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk
President's Weekly Update
2 July 2015
We heard the fantastic news that our Whitworth Art Gallery has won the national Museum of the Year award. Congratulations to Maria Balshaw and her team! You can find out more about this at:
The Distinguished Achievement Awards ceremony is one of our most important annual events and was held last week in the Whitworth Hall. This is when we recognise our most remarkable staff and students. Awards are presented to staff in our support services (individuals and teams), teachers and researchers, and undergraduate and postgraduate students. It was attended by the award winners, their nominators, supporters and guests and was followed by a lunch for all attendees. You can find out more about the winners at:
We also learnt that we have been awarded ‘major centre’ status by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), as one of only three in the country, along with Oxford and Cambridge. This will bring a further £5million in funding to the University from CRUK over the next two years. It was awarded to the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, which is the very successful partnership between the University, The Christie and CRUK, led by Professor Nic Jones, and is yet another success story for cancer research in Manchester.
It was a great pleasure to attend an event in London hosted by Lord David Alliance at his office in the spectacular Spencer House. David is a major donor to the University and hosted the event for about 70 friends and supporters of the University to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Manchester Business School. Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Manchester Business School, and I both spoke and we showed the short film on graphene:
Lord Jim O’Neill, who holds an honorary chair with us and is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, gave his time generously to meet with me and a number of our staff to discuss commercialisation of graphene and opportunities in health. Jim was given a tour of our National Graphene Institute (NGI) and met both Professors Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov. The NGI, although not quite yet fully open, was busy with participants from National Graphene Week which we hosted and which I gather was a great success.
Jim also co-hosted a dinner in London with me for senior alumni and major donors to the University and gave a fantastic background to the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. This was followed by a discussion on how we are contributing to the Northern Powerhouse, then more generally on how our alumni and friends can support the key missions of the University.
We had a visit from a high level delegation of about 40 senior officials from China, including the Chinese Ambassador to the UK and the Chinese Consul General. In the morning, they all visited our National Graphene Institute (NGI), where I gave a presentation on the University and Professor Kostya Novoselov talked about graphene and its applications. In the afternoon, they visited our Manufacturing Technology Research Laboratory in the Sackville Street Building before going on to the Manchester City Football Academy.
I met another two Ambassadors together - the British Ambassador to Korea and the Korean Ambassador to the UK, both of whom visited the University. We discussed how we can forge stronger links with Korea in research, student mobility and business. Both Ambassadors then met with a group of our Korean students.
At a meeting of the group taking forward part of the ‘Devo Health’ agenda, we agreed on priorities for delivery, branding, stakeholders and possible launch of the Academic Health Science System in Greater Manchester.
Professor Clive Agnew, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students, and I had one of our regular meetings with Charlie Cook, General Secretary of the Students’ Union. Sadly, this was our last meeting with Charlie, who has done a great job. We were joined by her successor, Naa Acquah, who has just taken over. We discussed how we work closely with the Students’ Union and talked about likely challenges over the next year.
While in London for various other meetings, including the Council of the Royal Society, I met some of our senior alumni in one-to-one meetings to talk about their support for the University - quite successful!
It was a great privilege to attend an event at the Guildhall in London where the speaker was Bill Clinton. He lived up to all I had heard about him being a charismatic and engaging speaker. He talked about ‘inclusive capitalism’, which he said meant distributing wealth but not losing profit; avoiding ‘them and us’ cultures, while not losing identities; how companies can make money while still improving the benefit of their lowest paid workers, engaging their local communities and being more sustainable; and how businesses need to think about ‘stakeholders’ rather than shareholders. Quite a remarkable line up on the front row: the Lord Mayor of London; the head of Rothschilds; Carlos Slim (said to be the richest man in the world); Mark Carney (Governor of the Bank of England) and Ratan Tata (head of the Tata family).
Professor Colin Stirling visited us from Australia where he is now President and Vice-Chancellor of Flinders University. Colin was our Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students for several years. It was clear that Australian universities are facing exactly the same challenge as us: diminishing government funding, ever increasing demands on our outcomes and further global competition.
We held what may have been the last meeting of the group I co-chair, which was established to identify the strengths in Life Sciences (encompassing all areas of health) across Greater Manchester and Cheshire East and to develop a future strategy. The group was established to follow on from the Task Force that looked at the consequences of AstraZeneca leaving Alderley Park in Cheshire. In fact the Alderley Park site is doing extremely well and we agreed that our group now has to come under the wider ‘Devo Health’ and the Academic Health Science System work in the region.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk