By Tim Elliott
Colleagues will be pleased to know the Faculty’s submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) was delivered in good time at 15.03 on Thursday 28 November. Medicine contributed examples of world-class research from 157 staff, 21 more than in the 2008 exercise, and included 16 impact case studies. This is significant because, across the whole of the UK, submissions to the medicine UoAs were slightly lower for REF than for RAE 2008. It means that we are hoping to demonstrate that we are both bigger AND better than ever before! In all, the University REF submission ran to 3,300 pages with 130 Impact Case Studies. Thank you very much to everyone involved in this epic task for your patience and good humour. We are preparing précis of all the impact case studies we worked on, including those that were not eventually selected for the
Faculty website
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We have been recognised by the World Allergy Organisation as a Centre of Excellence in Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and judged to be the only centre in the UK eligible for the honour. The Centre is led by Professor Hassan Arshad with the support of Drs Tony Williams and Graham Roberts and you can read more about it elsewhere in this newsletter.
Following on from the Dean’s news about fundraising for our Centre for Cancer Immunology, the University Office of Development and Alumni Relations people organised two high-level networking events at the Royal Society. Professors Cameron, Johnson, Elliott and Glennie have been working hard to bring the vision of future cancer immunotherapy to life for its influential attendees.
Medicine continues to lead the development of the Wessex Life Sciences Alliance as a regional outreach from the Institute for Life Sciences (IfLS) linking with Porton Down, Salisbury NHS Trust and the UHS NHS Foundation Trust around our shared research interests in immunology, microbiology and genetics. All these come together in the applied discipline of vaccinology and we are ready to launch the Wessex Vaccinology Centre in partnership with the Wessex Academic Health Science Network.