President's weekly update

6 May 2021

Covid vaccinations continue to roll out effectively. I hope you are all taking advantage of vaccination or will do so as soon as you are called. This means that infection rates in Manchester are falling as they are across the UK. However, many countries are still suffering very badly, notably India, parts of Africa and South America, and many of our staff and students will have relatives and close friends in those countries. Our thoughts are with them and the many closer to home who have suffered so badly.

I chaired the Board of our Digital Futures activity which cuts across every School in the University. We were joined by Professors Sami Kaski and Magnus Rattray to discuss artificial intelligence and its application to health. This is an exciting and very rapidly growing area, which provides huge opportunities and brings together our staff in health, maths, computer science, trust and security, social sciences and economics. The Board includes leaders from Greater Manchester, GCHQ and Professor Tom Rodden, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

I continue to meet regularly with a range of students from across the University. This week senior colleagues and I met course reps in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. Their views and questions – the likelihood of returning to more in-person teaching and when we will be able to hold in-person graduation events, echoed those which have come out of so many meetings this year, and which we hope very soon to have some certainty on.  Obviously we are hoping to return to much more in-person activities but it’s also necessary to plan for a range of scenarios.

Professor Nalin Thakkar, Vice-President for Social Responsibility with oversight for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and Mehrunissa Lalani, interim director of EDI and I met with our Disabled Staff Network to hear their views on the support we provide and what more we could do. Some acknowledged the great support they had received notably from DASS, our Disability and Advisory Support Service, though they recognised the pressures on staff in DASS. Of much more concern was the report of some disabled staff that they had horrible experiences of barriers and discrimination. Several felt that there was not enough awareness of, or training, in recognising and understanding the impact of disabilities, particularly those that may not be immediately obvious. They also felt that we can be too slow in responding to disability requirements and often put deadlines on consultations that are too tight for disabled staff, or fail to consult early enough in processes or changes. Nalin and Mehrunissa will look at what improvements can be made and develop an action plan in this area.

I attended three Russell Group meetings. One was with the Minister for Science, Amanda Solloway, on research culture which the Russell Group has just published a paper on. This was presented by our Vice-President for Research, Professor Colette Fagan, who is leading on our own support for researchers, particularly those on fixed-term contracts. Of the other two meetings, the first was with German Vice-Chancellors and Jean-Eric Paquet, Director General, DG RTD European Commission, to discuss collaboration and push for the UK’s access to all parts of Horizon funding. The second was with Tom Tugendhat MP, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the China Research Group to discuss links with China. We asked for stronger coordination between research-intensive universities and government departments involved in foreign affairs.

Several senior staff and I met counterparts from the universities of Leeds and Sheffield to discuss potential collaborations. We already partner in Northern Gritstone, a venture capital fund which was launched last week, the Sir Henry Royce Institute and we are all members of the N8 (the eight research-intensive universities in the North), where we are focussing on net zero. We discussed how we can strengthen existing links and develop further collaborations in health.

I gave a lecture, via video, to about 100 MBA students on mergers and acquisitions. I spoke briefly about the role of a non-executive director, about our own merger between UMIST and the Victoria University of Manchester and those between Astra and Zeneca and between ICRF and Cancer Research Campaign, but focussed mainly on the attempted (but failed) hostile takeover of AstraZeneca by Pfizer while I was still on the AstraZeneca Board. Not something I expected to be teaching at the outset of my academic career.

I was delighted to introduce the research session, attended by over 180, as part of the Geoffrey Jefferson Brain Research Centre which is focussed on research on stroke, brain inflammation and brain tumours that align with my own research over many years. We announced around half a million pounds of philanthropic funding for a researcher and two PhD students who will working in areas within what is now becoming known as ‘The Geoff’. This enables important research to take place which can help change lives. We are extremely grateful to the donors.

We had an extended Board briefing on Innovation District Manchester, the future development of most of our North Campus when most staff and students will move into our new engineering building, MECD. Board members heard about the process for selecting our commercial partner, the reporting and governance and the next steps to conclude the selection.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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