ARTHRITIS RESEARCH CAMPAIGN FUNDS CELL THERAPY RESEARCH

The Arthritis Research Campaign has awarded funding of over £484,000 for a five year research programme into osteoarthritis, led by Professor Sally Roberts, Research Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine. Cell therapy research teams at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic and District Hospital NHS Trust will work on specific projects aimed at driving forward a new treatment for osteoarthritis.

The first project is investigating patients who have had cell therapy for cartilage damage and will research the factors which enhance recovery to see if it has delayed the start of osteoarthritis more than other treatments. Later a clinical trial will be run comparing the use of bone marrow stem cells with the alternative treatment of implanting cartilage cells.

A full time research associate, Helen McCarthy, a part time data analyst, Jane Barker, and a part time statistician, Dr Naomi Dugard, have been appointed under the supervision of Professor Roberts and co-investigators Professor James Richardson, Professor Iain McCall, Dr Jan Herman Kuiper, Dr Nikki Kuiper and Dr Eustace Johnson. The work will involve Mr Paul Harrison (Head of the Oswestry Cell Therapy Lab) and Mr Eric Robinson (Head of the Oswestry Outcome Centre).

ROYAL SOCIETY WORKING GROUP

Professor Peter Styles, Head of the Applied and Environmental Geophysics Group in the School of Physical and Geographical Sciences and Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, has been invited to join a Royal Society Working Group for a new science policy project on nuclear non-proliferation, chaired by Professor Roger Cashmore, FRS, Principal of Brasenose College, University of Oxford, and Past Director of CERN, reporting to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which met for the first time this week.

Recently, the Prime Minister launched The Road to 2010 - Addressing the nuclear question in the twenty first century, which sets out the UK's strategy in the run up to the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in Vienna in May.

With the rapid global increase in the development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy there is a perceived potential for nuclear materials to be acquired clandestinely and converted into fissile material for nuclear weapons by states or terrorist groups.

The committee will assess how proliferation resistance can be implemented, and how this might be applied to the nuclear fuel cycle, and will explore not only the potential and limitations of technology to improve proliferation resistance, but also economic and political arrangements, such as multilateral approaches to the fuel cycle.

EXPLORING INDIA-UK COLLABORATIONS IN HE

Professor Pat Bailey, Dean of Natural Sciences, represented the Vice-Chancellor at an all-day event to explore India-UK collaborations in Higher Education, held at Lancaster House in London.  At a round table discussion India's Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, outlined plans to increase HE participation in India from the current 26m to 70m over the next decade.  International collaboration will be an essential feature of this ambitious plan, for which there are clearly both challenges and opportunities.

Keele is one of a select number of UK Universities collaborating with the new Science Institutes in India, and the signing of a MoU with IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) Pune was presided over by Lord Mandelson at a midday ceremony, followed by a series of workshops and less formal discussions throughout the day. Professor Bailey is pictured second left.

DTL WINS PRESTIGIOUS AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING GROWTH

International demand for a non-animal method of safety testing products or chemicals on the skin for the pharmaceutical industry has helped Science Park-based Dermal Technology Laboratory (DTL) win the Award for Outstanding Growth at the highly competitive West Midlands Medical and Healthcare Business Awards 2010.

Organised by medical technology industry specialist MedilinkWM, the awards highlight the success of companies within the Medical Technologies Cluster, supported by Advantage West Midlands. DTL will now represent the region at the Medilink UK Awards in March. DTL is just two years old but the company's turnover has increased four-fold, while staff numbers have increased by 50 per cent in the last year.

Professor Jon Heylings, Professor of Toxicology at Keele and Chairman of DTL, said: "We are thrilled to win this prestigious award, which is great recognition of our sustained growth. We have invested in our staff, expertise and facilities and with support from the UKTI Passport to Export programme, were able to exhibit at international conferences, helping us win new business from Europe, the USA and Japan."

KEELE CONFERENCES NOMINATED FOR THREE NATIONAL AWARDS

Keele conferences team has been shortlisted for three top honours at a prestigious national ceremony.

Keele Conferences is in the running in the Best Academic Venue, Best Value For Money Conference Venue and Best Conference And Banqueting Staff categories at the annual Meetings And Incentive Travel Awards.
 
The awards are voted for by Keele's customers and in the last ten years the team has regularly been nominated, winning the Best Academic Venue category three times.

Last year Keele Conferences won gold in the Best Value for Money Conference Venue and Best Conference and Banqueting Staff categories at the Awards. The team also won Silver in the Best Academic Venue category. The final results will be announced at a Gala Presentation Dinner at the Novotel London West next month.

ACADEMY SCHOOL APPOINTMENT IN KENYA

Dr Ambreena Manji, Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice, has been appointed Director of The British Institute in Eastern Africa, a British Academy School based in Nairobi, Kenya. She will be seconded to Nairobi from Keele for two years.

The Institute, which was founded in 1959, promotes humanities and social science research across the whole of the eastern African region. Its library has recently been amalgamated with that of the neighbouring Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique to create an invaluable collection of Africana.

Ambreena is the first lawyer to be appointed Director. Whilst in East Africa, she will be doing archival research on the history of African legal education. She will also continue to write on land and financialisation and hopes to do empirical work on women's experiences of new property and mortgages laws in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. She would be very pleased to hear from anyone at Keele planning a research visit to the region.

SHADOW HEALTH MINISTER VISITS KEELE

Shadow Minister for Health, Stephen O'Brien, MP, visited Keele last week to be briefed on the University's health teaching and research activities.

The Conservative, MP for Eddisbury, Cheshire, was accompanied by Robert Jenrick, Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate for Newcastle-Under-Lyme, and was taken on a tour of the Medical School by Professor Andy Garner where he met staff and observed students at work in the anatomy suite.

Stephen, pictured above, also took the opportunity to visit the Centre for Applied Entomology and Parasitology, where he had in depth discussion with staff about their groundbreaking work on sandflies and the genetic modification of mosquitoes to control malaria transmission, an area in which, as Chair of the All Parliamentary Malaria Group, he has a particular interest.

The visit, which was hosted by Professor Peter Jones, Pro Vice-Chancellor, ended with lunch with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Janet Finch, who provided Stephen with an overview of the University and its plans for the future. 

RE-ELECTED TO UN COMMITTEE

Professor Patrick Thornberry, School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, has been re-elected to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

 
At a specially convened meeting of parties to the UN Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in New York, Professor Thornberry, pictured above, received the outstandingly high number of 144 votes. Candidates are nominated by their home state and voted on by governments assembling at the UN. Professor Thornberry has been a member of CERD since 2001 and this is his third election. He will serve as an independent expert on the Committee for another four years. Only two other UK universities enjoy the honour of providing candidates to the UN human rights bodies.

HOW TO FIND A DEAD BODY

Dr Jamie Pringle, School of Physical Sciences and Geography and the Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, gave a guest lecture to the Institute of Physics Hereford and Worcester Centre this week, entitled 'How to find a dead body: an insight into forensic geoscience'. This presented part of Keele's EPSRC-funded research into assisting police search teams to locate buried forensic objects. The lecture was sponsored by QinetiQ, who are experts in defence, energy and security.

PROSPECTS FOR THE ECONOMY

Professor Costas Milas, Keele Management School, discussed the prospects of the UK economy when he was interviewed live by BBC Radio Stoke this week.

Professor Milas assessed the prospects of the UK coming out of recession and predicted that UK growth will remain weak over the next two years.  This is due to interest rates rising earlier than expected in response to rising inflation and also due to demand for UK exports (the main driver of the economy) remaining weak in response to low world growth for 2010-2011.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

The first ever presentation of Diplomas in Nursing Studies to be validated by Keele took place in the Chapel on 30 January 1993. The occasion marked the end of the first three year Project 2000 course, launched by the Government to introduce higher education for nurses.