President's Weekly Update
9 June 2016
This week it was announced that we had been awarded one of twelve new, very prestigious Regius Professorships to mark the Queen’s 90th birthday. Ours is in the field of materials and will be held by Professor Phil Withers in the School of Materials. This is the second such professorship we have been awarded - the first, in physics, was awarded in 2013 and is held by Professor Sir Andre Geim.
The announcement of all Regius chairs was made at our University by John Penrose, MP, Minister for Constitutional Reform in the Cabinet Office, and was attended by our own staff, members of our Board and representatives of the other universities. It was followed by a tour of the amazing imaging facilities in the Henry Moseley X-Ray Facility in the Photon Science Institute (Alan Turing Building).
I chaired a meeting with another Minister, James Wharton, who is Minister for the Northern Powerhouse. He spoke on that subject in the Vital Topics series at Alliance Manchester Business School to a packed audience including members of the University, local businesses and local and regional government.
We also hosted a visit by an important Chinese official, Governor Lu Hao from Heilongjiang Province, with the President of Harbin Institute of Technology in China. Governor Lu, his colleagues and the Chinese Consul General, based in Manchester, visited the National Graphene Institute. I presented on the University’s links with China, Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov spoke about our work on graphene, and then all had a tour of the facilities.
I visited Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where I was taken on a tour of their very impressive children’s Clinical Research Facility. Senior colleagues and I then met with junior doctors who had trained in Manchester. They had some helpful suggestions for improving the education we offer, but their overall verdict was that "Manchester does a pretty good job". In an open meeting with staff, we discussed the opportunities offered by Devo Health and the new Faculty and how we respond to further new private medical schools and government changes to universities.
Many staff have contributed a huge amount of work to our proposal to the National Institute for Health Research for Biomedical Research Centre funding and are relieved that it has been submitted. Now we go straight on to the next proposal for a Clinical Research Facility, due in just a few weeks.
I hosted two staff events this week, one for new staff and the other for ‘leading teachers’ which included Naa Acqua, General Secretary of our Students’ Union. New staff spoke of the friendliness of Manchester – both the city and the University - particularly towards those joining us from overseas. They were drawn by our reputation, research excellence and facilities, but said we need to ‘show off’ more, standardise processes and make it easier to collaborate across different parts of the University.
The ‘leading teachers’ discussed how we improve teaching quality, ensure parity of esteem between teaching and research, respond to the forthcoming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and better deal with ‘disengaged students’.
I visited the site office for MECD (Manchester Engineering Campus Development), which is our biggest ever capital programme. Steve Jordan, Assistant Director of Estates and Facilities and Head of Capital Projects at the University, introduced me to the impressive team and the beautiful model of MECD. I could have watched the demolition of our old Materials building all afternoon- if it hadn’t been so warm! You can see photos of my visit in:
I had one of my regular meetings with the Chairman of our Board of Governors, Anil Ruia, to update him on all the many activities in the University, including budget setting, the challenges of the government’s proposed changes to universities and delivering our capital programme.
This was followed by one of our ‘briefings’ for our Board of Governors, which provides an opportunity to update members on a core area of the University. At this meeting, in the National Graphene Institute, Clive Rowland, Chief Executive of UMI³, the University’s innovation company, and James Baker, the Business Director for the National Graphene Institute, discussed our activities and plans for commercialisation of our discoveries, particularly in materials, with a special focus on graphene and related two-dimensional materials. They both attracted a huge number of questions and much interest.
It was a pleasure to meet Lord David Alliance on campus. Lord Alliance has been our greatest benefactor to date, contributing to many projects and activities, most notably the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS). We discussed his ongoing support for AMBS, student work experience, health research and links with the Weizmann Institute.
Odd though it may seem, we held our office ‘Christmas event’ - we never seem to manage to find a time around Christmas. Staff in my office and I had a fantastic tour of Manchester Town Hall, during which we heard about its amazing history and saw its many beautiful features, followed by an early dinner.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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