ROYAL SOCIETY OF CHEMISTRY TEACHING AWARD

Dr Dave McGarvey, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, has been awarded the prestigious 2011 Royal Society of Chemistry Higher Education Teaching Award.

The RSC have made this award 'in recognition of the significant contribution Dave has made to chemistry education at third level for over a decade, particularly his implementation and evaluation of innovative and carefully-designed teaching and assessment methods'.

Head of School, Professor Mark Ormerod, said: "All who know Dave will know that this award is hugely deserved, that 'significant contribution' is very understated. Dave is an outstanding and naturally highly innovative teacher of chemistry at all levels to all disciplines, whether chemistry students or environmental science or geoscience students, trainee teachers, existing science teachers.

"Over the years he has been responsible for a large number of excellent teaching innovations, both in terms of delivery and innovative assessment methods, often very challenging to the students, which have been widely disseminated and have been adopted by other institutions and other subject disciplines. As colleagues will know, Dave is incredibly committed both to teaching excellence and to creating the best possible student experience, and his approach to teaching and assessment is highly respected by our students, past and present, and colleagues alike."

SIZZLING SUCCESS FOR YOUNG KEELE CHEF

Keele's Ruby Rainey was crowned the Staffordshire 2011 Young Chef of Tomorrow at a gala dinner and awards ceremony at The Moat House, Acton Trussell.
 
Ruby, Keele Hall assistant chef, received the top award after a challenging two hour 'cook-off' at Stafford College, which saw the finalists prepare a three course meal using seasonal Staffordshire ingredients.

The 2011 Young Chef of Tomorrow won a commemorative silver salver, membership of the British Culinary Federation and a week's work experience with Andreas Antona at the Michelin starred fine dining restaurant Simpsons in Birmingham.    
           
Keele Hall head chef, Allan, took 2nd place in the Staffordshire Masterchef Competition for the second year in succession. Ruby and Allan were also awarded the runners-up prizes for Best Hygiene Practise in their competitions.

BEST EVIDENCE FOR BEST THERAPIES IN OSTEOARTHRITIS

Professor Krysia Dziedzic, Primary Care Health Sciences, this week gave the final lecture in the University's programme of Inaugural Lectures for 2010/11. The title of her lecture was "Best evidence for best therapies in osteoarthritis ".

Professor Dziedzic, who was interviewed on BBC Radio Stoke about her lecture, explained that there are over 200 different types of arthritis - the most common, and one of the leading causes of pain and disability worldwide, is osteoarthritis. Increases in life expectancy and ageing populations are expected to make osteoarthritis the fourth leading cause of disability by the year 2020. In 2008, NICE published recommendations for simple and effective treatments for osteoarthritis.

The lecture illustrated these approaches, drawing on research conducted locally. It charted the development of research into therapies for arthritis in the North West Midlands over the past 20 years and gave examples of how research is being put into practice for the benefit of patients, healthcare professionals and services. It concluded with how partnerships between researchers, healthcare professionals and patients can provide best evidence for best therapies for osteoarthritis in the future.

GATES FOUNDATION GRANT

Angus Dawson, School of Law/RI for Social Sciences, has received a grant for £15,750 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a project entitled 'The moral case for vaccination'.

The main output will be a discussion paper to inform the work of the Public and Political Support Working Group for the Decade of Vaccines (DoV) Collaboration.

 The DoV is an initiative to promote vaccination especially in the developing world jointly sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Gates Foundation, UNICEF and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). Roughly 2.5 million people (mostly young children) die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases.

The discussion paper is to inform arguments by global policy-makers and influence potential funders of vaccination programmes. This document builds upon the work Angus has done on vaccination ethics over the last ten years. An additional output will be a paper on the moral case for childhood vaccination that will appear in a special issue of 'Health Affairs' (the leading health policy journal) devoted to vaccination that will appear in June this year.

LITERARY PRIZE JUDGE

Professor Charlotte Williams, School of Public Policy and Professional Practice, served on the panel of judges for the Caribbean's new literary prize. The Bocas Lit Fest, held in Trinidad and Tobago, was inaugurated this year as an important addition to the Caribbean literary calendar, providing at its centrepiece the award ceremony for the OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean Literature.

The prize of $10,000 is a major new pan-Caribbean award for poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction. Professor Williams joined a distinguished panel of judges to adjudicate the non-fiction category and attend the Lit-Fest to give readings from her memoir, Sugar and Slate.

The winners of the three genre categories became the finalists for the overall prize. The Haitian-American writer, Edwidge Danticat, was the non-fiction category winner for her essay collection, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. St. Lucian Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott, won the poetry category, for his book White Egrets and the fiction category winner was How to Escape a Leper Colony, the debut short fiction collection by Tiphanie Yanique, of the US Virgin Islands. Walcott scooped up the prize as the 2011 winner.

AFTER THE APOCALYPSE

Professor Stephen Wilkinson, School of Law, was a panellist at the world public premiere of a documentary film called After the Apocalypse; other panellists included the film's director, Antony Butts, and Baroness Helena Kennedy.

The film tells the story of people living close to a former Soviet nuclear test site in Kazakhstan and explores doctors' and patients' attitudes to the (real or perceived) risks of genetic damage caused by radiation.  The premiere, which took place in London's Leicester Square, was sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. See: http://agadem.co.uk/after-apocalypse.

Professor Wilkinson was interviewed by the Today programme about the film and also appeared on BBC Radio Stoke this week to discuss the BBC television programme, Inside the Human Body, which sparked some controversy by showing the death of an 84-year-old man.

FAIRTRADE STATUS MAINTAINED

Keele has successfully maintained its Fairtrade university status following a review by the Fairtrade Foundation.

All coffee and black tea served at University meetings and in retail outlets across the campus is Fairtrade, and there are more than 50 different Fairtrade products being used and sold.

The Fairtrade Foundation said: "Keele is clearly committed to Fairtrade, and this shows in your success in upholding and surpassing the five goals."

Susan Warrender, head of catering and retail at Keele, said: "We recognise our role within the wider world in bringing about fairness in terms of prices, working conditions, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in developing countries. The use and promotion of Fairtrade products is a simple but effective way for us to help achieve this."

For more information about Fairtrade at Keele see http://www.keele.ac.uk/studyatkeele/tastekeele/fairtrade/

VE @ KEELE VOLUNTEERS CELEBRATE ACHIEVEMENTS

VE @ Keele hosted its annual celebration event yesterday in the Claus Moser Research Centre. It provides an opportunity to recognise, reward and celebrate volunteering achievement throughout the academic year.

The event, which included a reception and was opened by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, was well attended by a number of students, as well as key Keele staff and volunteer placement providers currently working in partnership with VE @ Keele.

Students who have actively volunteered throughout the year spoke about their experiences and placement providers, including Staffordshire Girlguides and CEDARS Pupil Referral Unit, spoke about the positive contribution student volunteers can make to their organisations.

During the event, 22 VE Awards at Bronze, Silver Gold or Platinum were presented. Three Student Volunteering England Awards were also presented to Danielle Bremner, Keele Student Mediation Service and Keele Environmental Group.

This year's Best Placement Provider of the Year Award went to Keele Student Mediation Service and Keele Nightline. Other Awards included the new Active Student Volunteer Award and the VE @ Keele Certificate of Commendation. Forty-three students gained a VE Positive Contribution to the Community Award for 2010-2011.

KEELE ASTRONOMERS WIN INTERNATIONAL FACILITY TIME

Keele astronomers have again been very successful in gaining highly competitive access to several international astronomical observatories.

Keele PhD student Jeremy Tregloan-Reed, with John Taylor, pictured left, Pierre Maxted and Alexis Smith, won six nights on the 2.2m telescope at Calar Alto in Southern Spain.

They will measure brightness variations during transit of extrasolar planets in front of their host star, to find out more about these planets such as their temperature, as well as about the occurrence of cool spots on their host star's surface.

Jacco van Loon, with Keele PhD student Mandy Bailey, won four nights on the 3.9m Anglo Australian Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. They will map the distribution of gas present in between stars within the nearby Magellanic Clouds dwarf galaxies and in the foreground Milky Way. The gas reveals itself
by absorbing the light of stars at specific frequencies ("colours").

Both awards were made through the OPTICON transnational access programme, which is supported by the European Commission's FP7 Capacities programme. The financial value assigned by STFC to this facility time for the purposes of
RAE/REF metrics, is £128 K.

Jacco, with Keele PhD student Masha Lakicevic, also won 35.5 hours of observing time at the Australia Telescope Compact Array radio interferometre, in New South Wales. They will obtain high-resolution microwave images of the remnant of the supernova that was seen to explode in 1987 in the Large
Magellanic Cloud.

Keele astronomers were also very successful in winning time on space-based facilities: Keele PhD student Adam Patrick, with his supervisor James Reeves, won 270 ks of observing time on the Japanese Suzaku X-ray Observatory. The project involves attempting to measure the spin of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the active galaxy, ESO 511-G030.

Nye Evans, pictured left, was awarded 3.5 hours of Director's Discretionary Time (DDT) on the European Space Agency's Herchel Infrared Observatory, to observe the explosion of the recurrent nova T Pyxidis. He was also awarded 0.2 hours DDT on the NASA
Spitzer Space Telescope to observe the same event. In both cases he leads a multinational (UK/USA/European/Indian) collaboration, part of an international campaign to observe this rare event.

The explosion of T Pyxidis is also being observed with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) - the largest single optical telescope in the world, of which Keele is a partner.

GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM 2011

The Graduate School held its seventh annual Research Symposium at Keele Hall this week.  The event brought together doctoral researchers and research staff from across the University to provide an opportunity to showcase the innovative research taking place at the University.  The event was attended by over 150 delegates and there were 69 research presentations; 36 entrants for the research poster competition and 33 entrants for the paper competition.  
 
Dr Mark Spencer, Curator of the British and Irish & Sloane Herbariums at the Natural History Museum, London, was invited as guest speaker, alongside the keynote speaker Dr E Wyn James, Lecturer in Modern Welsh Literature in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University.   

All the entries for the poster competition were of a high standard.  The first prize for this competition was awarded to Samantha Wilson who presented her poster on 'Non-destructive monitoring of the effect of conditions on corneal stromal cell differentiation in hydrogels'.  The runners-up were Hannah Moore, Kristopher Wisniewski and Michael Kelly.  All four winners will go on to represent the University at the Vitae regional final at Nottingham Trent University in July.

The winners of the paper sessions were Domenica Coxon, Julie Green, Gemma Mansell, Kathleen Watts, Mehluli Ndlovu, Tom Porter, Jemma Cowen, Katie McGettigan and Alkistis Ntai.

SECRETARY GENERAL

Professor Peter Crome, Research Institute for Social Sciences, has been re-elected Secretary General of the Clinical Section of the International Association of Geriatrics and Gerontology - Europe.

The Clinical Section comprises all the national geriatric medicine societies in Europe and develops policy and practice guidelines, interacts with the EU and WHO as well as holding international meetings. His term of office lasts until 2015.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE KEYNOTE

Dr Stefan Krause, Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, presented the first keynote at the 3rd International Multidisciplinary Conference on Hydrology and Ecology in Vienna.

In his invited presentation on "Multi-scale tracing of reactivity hotspots in hyporheic environments" he introduced the application of novel sensor technology in ecohydrology and biogeochemistry. His conference attendance was supported by a Royal Society International Travel Grant (£1,150) and by the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (£650).

PIONEERS REUNION 2011

Nearly one hundred Keele alumni and their guests attended the Pioneers Reunion in Keele Hall last weekend. This year's Pioneers Reunion was for graduates of 1965 to 1969.

A special programme recalled Keele in the changing times of the 1960s and presented changes facing Keele fifty years later. Alongside tours of the Home Farm Sustainability Hub, the Observatory, Keele Hall, the renovated Lakes and Woodlands; there was a discussion with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, and a presentation by students about the Green House initiative and other activities.

The Vice-Chancellor welcomed and addressed the Pioneers Dinner; SU President-elect, Rosie Weatherley, spoke and toasted the Pioneers on behalf of the Students' Union and Bill Proctor (KUSU President, 1965-1996) responded for the Pioneers. Several students helped and alumni remarked that the calibre and passion of Keele's students had not waned since their own well-remembered days.

KEELE ASTROPHYSICIST GUEST LECTUR IN TEHRAN

Keele astronomer Jacco van Loon was an invited guest lecturer at the Advanced
Course on Late Stages of Stellar Evolution organised by the Institute for
Research in Fundamental Sciences in Tehran, Iran.

He took care of half of the four-day programme, which was attended by more than 30 postgraduate students.

LEADERSHIP AND VOLUNTEERING AWARD

Keele Football Club captain, Sean Szabo, was among the best of Higher Education Football and Futsal volunteers to converge on Wembley to celebrate their success and receive British Universities and College Sport Leadership and Volunteering Awards.

He joined other volunteers involved in the FA's Leadership and Volunteering Programme, Football Futures, to receive awards and congratulations.  Sean, who is studying Business Management and Marketing, did 250 volunteer hours in coaching, event planning and administration.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Professor Peter Styles, Head of the School of Earth Sciences and Geography, has been appointed President-Elect of the Geological Society of London. He will serve on Council for one year supporting the current President, before taking up the Presidency in May 2004 for two years.

The Geological Society of London, founded in 1807, is the oldest national geological society in the world, and the largest in Europe. Previous Presidents have included Thomas Huxley and Charles Lyell, while Charles Darwin served as Secretary of the Society. 16 May 2003.