Presidents' Weekly Update
21 May 2015
We were delighted to hear that our Jodrell Bank Observatory has received support from the Heritage Lottery fund for a £12million bid to support the ‘First Light’ project. This aims to conserve and restore the heritage at the Jodrell Bank site and create a spectacular new visitor space. The bid was led by Dr Teresa Anderson, Director of Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre, so congratulations to all involved in the bid.
This follows the celebrations over the recent announcement of Jodrell Bank as the international headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) of radio-telescopes, which is a massive international project involving many countries.
At the end of last week I travelled to Boston (for just over 24 hours) for a meeting of our North American Foundation (NAFUM). The Foundation has grown considerably over the last year or so. I gave an overview of the successes, concerns and opportunities for the University, and NAFUM members were particularly interested in health opportunities arising from political changes. Chris Cox, Director of Development and Alumni Relations, gave an overview of philanthropy and Fiona Manning, Senior Development Officer, talked about her international activities. Sadly I missed the boat tour of Boston Harbour.
While I was away in the States, the Chancellor of the Exchequer visited Manchester again to give a speech on devolution of powers to major cities and discussed more detail of devolution to Manchester. Senior colleagues from the University attended the event.
It was announced by the Chancellor that Jim O’Neill, who holds an honorary professorship with us, will join the House of Lords and become a Minister as Commercial Secretary to the Treasury.
In relation to another ‘Chancellor’, voting for the next Chancellor of The University of Manchester opens on 26 May. You can see details of the three candidates at:
All those eligible to vote will be contacted with further information about how to vote.
I visited the School of Physics and Astronomy to meet staff. They were understandably celebrating recent successes at Jodrell Bank. We also talked about the strength of other research areas, recent staff recruitment, their very strong student applications and plans for the extension of the Schuster Building.
I was interviewed for Bloomberg magazine about research on stroke, general challenges for the pharmaceutical industry and developments in the latest class of new drugs to treat cancer using ‘immunotherapy’.
I met Professor John Brooks, Vice-Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University, and Claire Lowe, Partnership Manager of Corridor Manchester, of which we are a member. John retires at the end of May and I will then take over as Chair of Corridor Manchester. The other members are the City Council, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Bruntwood. The main topics of activity and discussion for the Corridor are provision of retail and leisure offers, housing for staff at the main partner institutions and transport plans.
It was a great pleasure to meet a longstanding friend, Dame Bridget Ogilvie, with Professor Martin Humphries, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences. Bridget was Director of the Wellcome Trust for a number of years and was very helpful in establishing the Society of Biology (I was President and Martin was a Council member at the foundation of the Society), so we celebrated the news of the granting of its Royal title. We also discussed numerous other issues such as funding, politics, international science and recent successes in Manchester - many of which she had heard of even while spending the winter in Australia.
I was also very pleased to see Dr Eli Harari in Manchester again. Eli graduated from Manchester in physics and later went on to found the company Sandisk, which makes many of the data sticks that we all use. He was given the highest honour for entrepreneurs in the USA by President Obama. Eli has been a great supporter of our graphene research and visited the National Graphene Institute. He also met the winner of the Graphene Enterprise prize, supported by him and his wife, and met several senior staff including Professor Kostya Novoselov.
I met Paul Martin, who is Managing Director of Ainscough Strategic Land, a local company. Paul is one of our graduates and attended a dinner at which I spoke in London. He is extremely enthusiastic about the University and Manchester and keen to help us. We discussed the role that he and his company might take in mentoring and supporting some of our students.
I was also involved in discussions about the appointment of an ‘interim mayor’ of Greater Manchester before the first elected mayor is appointed in 2017.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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