President's weekly update
10 November 2022
Government engagement
Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, visited the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, his first visit since he was appointed to the role. He toured the facilities and heard about several aspects of our research, led by Professor David Knowles and Professor Sir Peter Gregson, the chief executive and chair of Royce, respectively. Professor Richard Jones, Vice-President for regional innovation and civic engagement, and I talked to him about many aspects of our innovation activities.
In an online meeting I met George Freeman who has returned as the Minister for Science to discuss funding, Horizon Europe, innovation accelerators (we are one of three regions to have submitted our bid) and international collaborations.
New funding successes
The Secretary of State’s visit was in part to announce £95m new funding for the Royce Institute, the headquarters of which is based in our university.
The Arts Council England has just announced its new national portfolio of funded organisations for 2023-26. Our bid, jointly from our Manchester Museum, the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Galleries Partnership has been awarded £4.9m (the full amount we bid for).
I also signed an agreement with Tata for a major new partnership and funding in materials research. Senior staff from Tata visited Manchester over several days, which followed our meeting with them in India. Their initial focus is on advanced materials, including biomaterials and sustainability, but we also discussed the Tata Group’s interests in cancer and health more widely, social responsibility, global development and supporting scholarships for disadvantaged Indian students.
Planning and accountability
As part of our annual cycle, we are now undertaking in-depth analyses of performance of all areas against our plans and targets. This includes research, teaching and learning, social responsibility, finance, EDI, environmental sustainability, international partnerships, innovation and compliance and risk. These will feed into the Board accountability conference later this month. At our Strategic Planning Group, we also considered the assumptions for our next financial plans. These are really challenged by inflation and uncertainty, as we all are.
I discussed the Board conference with our Board chair, Philippa Hird. Important outcomes from our annual performance reviews, which will be discussed at the Board conference, are student experience and wellbeing, staff workload and wellbeing and financial sustainability.
Finance
We held the annual joint meeting of our Board Finance Committee and Audit and Risk Committee to consider our financial statements for the last academic year and the report of our external auditors - which found no significant concerns. We expect to be able to publish our financial statements within the next two months.
Our Chancellor
Patrick Hackett, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, met our Chancellor, Nazir Afzal. He has been visiting many areas of the University as part of an ongoing programme. His main comment was that we don’t do enough to promote the many great things we do. One example was the student mental health support centre, which we think is still unique – Nazir was very impressed. He is also keen to act as an ambassador for the University, and to help in fundraising, and he will be hosting a dinner in the New Year.
Cancer research
We heard extremely positive feedback from the impressive international advisory board for our Manchester Cancer Research Centre. Board members had much praise and focussed on exactly the areas that senior colleagues and I are discussing with leaders at the Christie and CRUK-innovation, structure and brand/profile. They particularly commended some of the cross-disciplinary research.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor