News about Research
By Professor Tim Elliott
First of all, I must thank everyone involved in preparing the Faculty’s submission for the REF for all their hard work. The process has been lengthy but it is now nearing its end and the high quality of our research clearly shows in the documentation. This has been the most “tactical” research assessment exercise yet and has inevitably led to some exclusions. Nevertheless, most peoples’ research contribution has been noted in some way. To use an analogy, leading the REF process is a little like running a football team, you have to choose your best team for the match ahead.
Our Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit is now part of the University’s Faculty of Medicine. This is another milestone in the history of the Unit which was founded by Professor David Barker in 1984 as an Epidemiology Resource Centre and is now directed by Professor Cyrus Cooper as a centre of excellence using epidemiological methods to promote human health. Earlier this year we marked 100 years of the MRC with a ceremony at the Turner Sims Concert Hall and city Mayor Councillor Ivan White cut the celebratory cake and Professor Barker, who sadly died last month, delivered a most engaging and erudite retrospective of his theory for the developmental origins of health and disease which has propagated so many new exciting areas of research. We pay tribute to him elsewhere in this newsletter.
The Faculty is playing a key role in the new Wessex Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) which links 12 NHS Trusts and five universities in our region; our Vice-Chancellor Professor Don Nutbeam is the partnership’s interim chair and Dean of Medicine, Professor Iain Cameron, is leading for our University.
http://wessexahsn.org/
We are also sharing in a £9 million grant to the University from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to form the Wessex Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLARHC). It will address ways of improving care across six areas, three of which: respiratory disease, ageing and primary care and public health, are led from the Faculty (Tom Wilkinson; Dr Helen Roberts; Paul Rodderick, Mike Moore and Julie Parkes respectively). The Faculty of Health Sciences is leading on this initiative which also involves the UHS NHS Foundation Trust.
http://www.nihr.ac.uk/infrastructure/Pages/CLAHRCs.aspx
Colleagues involved in the LifeLab initiative have now moved into an impressive new purpose-built laboratory on Level D of the hospital, a formal opening will take place in due course. Our new molecular research lab (the WISH lab) is finished too, and Dr Tony Williams has been appointed as its Director.
Work is underway on the first stages of development of our Centre for Cancer Immunology with the launch of an ambitious fundraising campaign at the Royal Society in London last month to match the generous £10 million donation already received by the University.