President's Weekly Update
29 October 2015
I’m sure you have seen the very extensive press coverage of the visit of the President of China, Xi Jinping and his wife to Manchester. The first stop on his visit last Friday was our National Graphene Institute (NGI), where he was welcomed by the Lord Lieutenant of Greater Manchester, Warren Smith, then introduced to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, other senior guests and our own staff.
Professor Andre Geim explained about the NGI to President Xi during his tour. I gave a talk on the University and its links with China, then Professor Kostya Novoselov gave a talk on graphene and presented the President with one of his Chinese paintings (which used graphene paint). Professor Colin Bailey (Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor) explained a little more about graphene and its potential.
The whole party included the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Jim O’Neill (who also holds an honorary chair with us), the Minister for the Northern Powerhouse, James Wharton, Anil Ruia, Chair of our Board of Governors, and a number of visiting VIPs such as Ambassadors for both countries, senior staff from the Chinese government from Beijing and the Manchester Consul General.
They all viewed four exhibitions on the applications of graphene and other advanced materials, heard explanations from our staff and students, and the President received some gifts, including a Manchester United football signed by Andre, Kostya and me. The visit ended with a tour of the ‘clean room’ which is very much the heart of NGI. The whole building was surrounded by thousands of Chinese students and well wishers. You can see a short film of the event at:
Several other staff from the University and I then attended a lunch for the President at the Town Hall at which the Lord Mayor of Greater Manchester, President Xi and the Prime Minister, David Cameron, spoke to about 200 attendees.
Rowena Burns, Chief Executive of Manchester Partnership (which owns much of the incubator space in Manchester and Alderley Park), interviewed me for a CityCo event in our Sackville Street building about the University, our links to business and local communities, start-up companies and entrepreneurs, our Research Beacons, the Northern Powerhouse and European City of Science.
Senior colleagues and I met with the members of our Students’ Union Executive. The main topics of discussion were our programme to provide a wider student experience and education (Manchester Advantage) and the Ethical Grand Challenges for our students, grievance claims, the current position with the trades unions, external speakers on campus and the visit of the President of China.
At a meeting of the Senior Leadership Team we heard the results of our external stakeholders review from Louise Simpson of Knowledge Capital. This is an exercise we have undertaken every two years to seek the views of many senior external stakeholders on the University. The results were generally very positive, with comments about the ambition, growing prominence and acknowledgement of the University and recognition of our Research Beacons. It also highlighted areas where we really need to improve and/or work harder to get messages across about the distinctiveness of our graduates, what difference our actions in Social Responsibility are making, success in business engagement (where we have come in the top few in many recent league tables), our great strengths in Humanities and our international reach and impact.
At Finance Sub-Committee we reviewed the financial reports for the past year (2014-15) which will be submitted to our Board of Governors for approval in November.
I travelled to Leeds for a Board meeting of N8, which is the partnership between the eight northern research intensive universities with representatives of the Local Enterprise Partnerships. I presented on the value of collaboration across the North, gave some examples and discussed the opportunities presented by the Northern Powerhouse.
It was a pleasure to meet Dr Mark Downs, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Biology. I was the first President of what was then just the Society of Biology and I am delighted by its great success from quite humble and uncertain beginnings to now attaining a Royal title. It currently has 16,000 members, many organisations as members and a range of activities across all of biology with school children, teachers, universities, industry and government. To find out more and become a member, see:
At a further meeting of staff from across the University working on ‘precision medicine’ (targeting medicines to individual patients and specific types of disease) which I chair, we heard about progress in external funding and philanthropy to support our activities, and opportunities to develop new areas in diagnostics and medical technologies - the latter particularly with the Medicines Technology Catapult that will be at Alderley Park. It has now been announced by Innovate UK that we are one of six members of the national precision medicine catapult.
In other meetings, I was involved in planning for the forthcoming Planning and Resources Committee and Board of Governors, chaired another of the Faculty Annual Performance Reviews and the Senior Salaries Review Group, and discussed the plans for our Manchester Engineering Campus Development (MECD).
You can watch a great time lapse film about the demolition of the bridge across Oxford Road:
On a ‘social visit’ to Quarry Bank Mill near the airport (well worth a visit), I heard by chance about the growing links with the University on the social history of the region.
I was delighted to hear that the Lonely Planet Guide has recognised - what we all know – that Manchester is one of the world’s best cities to visit. In the 2016 edition, Manchester is the only UK city to appear in this top 10 list, having earned the accolade for its new role as “a dynamo of British culture”:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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