TOP RESEARCH APPOINTMENT FOR PRIMARY CARE DIRECTOR

Professor Elaine Hay, Director of the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele, has been appointed as an NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) Senior Investigator.

Senior Investigators are the NIHR's pre-eminent researchers and represent the country's most outstanding leaders of clinical and applied health and social care research. Senior Investigators are fundamental to the formation of the NIHR Faculty.

She was one of 25 new appointees announced after the latest annual competition. A total of 54 Senior Investigators were appointed, including 29 re-appointments, bringing the number up to 208. The competition received 177 applicat-ions, including many from current senior investigators wishing to continue in the role for a second and final term.

An independent expert panel advise on the appointments, which are made according to criteria of quality and volume of internationally excellent research; its relevance to patients; and the public; impact on improvements in healthcare and public health; impact of their individual research leadership; engagement of patients and the public and engagement of healthcare policy makers and planners with their research.

NATIONAL COLLECTION STATUS FOR KEELE FLOWERING CHERRY TREES

The University has achieved the prestigious award of National Collection status for the flowering cherry trees on the campus. 

The award, bestowed by Plant Heritage, is for our collection of 240 varieties of cherry planted across the campus.  Only seven other universities hold National Collections and most of those are in the Russell group.

While many of the trees are still young, the collection builds upon the long history of cherries on the campus, using the expertise of Chris Sanders, a noted plantsman, and members of the University Arboretum Committee.  It has been partly funded by Plant Heritage but primarily by generous donations of alumni in memory of John Ivinson, and by Philip Davies and his family.

As well as making the campus visually stunning in the spring, the collection is primarily of scientific use, acting as a reserve for unusual and little known varieties.  Material has been supplied to national nurseries, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Natural History Museum, London, and the web site, run by Dave Emley, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, attracts attention from around the world.

The curator for the collection is Dr Peter Thomas, School of Life Sciences. Further information on the collection, including flowering times, and location of individuals, can be found at: www.keele.ac.uk/arboretum/trees/cherries/.

CHINA JILIANG UNIVERSITY DELEGATES VISIT KEELE TO DISCUSS COLLABORATIONS

A top level delegation from China Jiliang University visited Keele last week to discuss collaborations and future co-operation. The group was welcomed by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, and a gift exchange between our institutions took place before a meeting with Dr Steve French and Dr Jack Cao at Keele Management School to continue discussions about collaboration.

After lunch, Mrs Ximena Canter, Business Manager for Natural Sciences, chaired a meeting with Professor Graham Rogerson, Dr Anne Loweth, Dr Annette Kratz, and the delegation to discuss future co-operation in Natural Sciences. After a fruitful meeting the delegation was taken on tours of the Schools of Life Sciences and Computing and Mathematics.
 
The delegation was led by Professor Jianzhong Lin, President of China Jiliang University, who was accompanied by Professor Qing Li, Dean of College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering; Professor Shangzhong Jin, Dean of College of Optical and Electronic Technology; Professor Cheng Zhu, Dean of College of Life Sciences; Professor Xinqing Wang, Deputy Dean of College of Material Science and Engineering; and Professor Haiqing Huang, Deputy Director of Science and Technology.

China Jiliang is a highly prestigious institution, one of just 28 universities in China permitted to use the prefix China in their name.

IN MEMORY OF CLAUDE DEBUSSY 

Barbara Kelly, Professor of Musicology, has returned from two international events in honour of the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy's birth.

Professor Kelly was invited to participate in the Paris celebrations, which were funded by the French Ministry of Culture and CNRS. 

She gave a paper entitled 'L'Héritage de Debussy dans les années vingt: Prunières, Vallas et Vuillermoz'. The event, which was introduced by contemporary composer, Pierre Boulez, enabled her to present findings from her British Academy-funded research on Léon Vallas.
 
Professor Kelly also participated in the Montréal Debussy Festival at l'Université de Montréal, giving a paper entitled 'Writing Early Debussy in Interwar France'. 

Her paper, which was part of a themed session on Debussy biography in the interwar period, enabled her to take her research on Debussy legacy in a new direction. 

Both events included series of public concerts with premières of recently completed works of the composer.

STEM ENRICHMENT AT THE HUB

Twenty-eight enthusiastic young STEM Club members from West Midlands' schools took part in a Royal Society of Chemistry/ Keele/ Science Learning Centre STEM Enrichment event at the Sustainability Hub this week.

They were challenged to construct models of buckminster-fullerene, diamond, aspirin and cadaverine, by Dr Graeme Jones in his "Make it Molecular" workshop.

During a thought provoking, engaging and informative demonstration lecture, "Fireworks, Rainbows and Magic Bullet Medicines", Professor Pat Bailey, Dean of Natural Sciences, pictured, demonstrated that chemistry and chemicals are all around us and certainly made the students sit up and take notice with his hydrogen balloon explosions.

He concluded a successful event with a colourful firework, set off in the courtyard and some of the students had reflexes good enough to catch this explosively fast reaction on video.

STEM STUDENTS VISIT DTL

Students from Newcastle College's STEM Career Academy enjoyed a visit to Dermal Technology Laboratory Ltd in IC4 at Keele University Science and Business Park as part of their industry-focused Career Academy programme.

The students met with the directors of the company to hear about their personal career paths, which had brought them from large organisations, such as ICI, Astra Zeneca and Syngenta, to a successful start-up based at Keele.

One of the directors, Professor Jon Heylings, Professor of Toxicology in the School of Pharmacy at Keele, pictured, highlighted the wide variety of roles that are available within science-based companies and encouraged the students to consider careers in industry.

Rosi Monkman, of Keele University Science and Business Park, who brokers the relationship between the STEM Career Academy and the Science Park companies, said: "If we are to attract and retain science and technology based companies to Keele, it is important that they can recruit a local workforce with the relevant science qualifications".

KEELE LINKS WITH VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITY

Professor Bill Farrell, Research Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine (ISTM), has been appointed Honorary Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Technology at the TUAF University in Vietnam.

The appointment strengthens already established research links and will be directed toward a better understanding of prostate cancer and the epigenetic profiles of transgenic plants. Planned research will attract funding through the Vietnamese government as collaborative ventures and will take place predominantly in the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Technology in Vietnam.

BABY GAGA SAGA WORKSHOP

The Gender, Sexuality and Law research group (Centre for Law Ethics and Society) hosted a workshop, The Baby Gaga Saga, on Monday, which was inspired by the recent media brouhaha around the Baby Gaga (later Baby Goo Goo) ice-cream, created by Londonʼs Icecreamist, using human breast milk.

Speakers explored the objections and questions raised by the 'Baby Gaga saga', focusing on the regulation of human breast milk as a 'product', while also touching on perennial ethical and political issues around breastfeeding.

The interdisciplinary workshop brought together a diverse range of speakers and participants working in relevant areas representing practitioners, activists and academics from sociology, law, anthropology, ethics, human geography, nursing, midwifery and medicine.

MUSIC AND EMOTION

Dr Alexandra Lamont, School of Psychology, has returned from a week's teaching at the Interdisciplinary College (IK) in Günne at Lake Möhne in Germany. 

The IK is an annual, intense one-week spring school which offers a dense state-of-the-art course programme in neurobiology, neural computation, cognitive science/psychology, artificial intelligence, robotics and philosophy. It was attended by nearly 200 students, postgraduates and researchers from academia and industry. 

Dr Lamont was one of 33 invited speakers and gave four well-attended sessions on music and emotion within this year's theme of Emotion and Aesthetics.

BRITISH ACADEMY RESEARCH GRANTS

Professor Scott McCracken, Research Institute for the Humanities, has received a British Academy Small Research Grant to fund a Research Assistant to work with him on the Collected Letters of the influential modernist writer Dorothy Richardson.

In the 1920s, Richardson was often compared with James Joyce and Marcel Proust as one of the first writers of 'stream of consciousness'. Recently, there has been renewed interest in her work as a writer, a pioneering feminist, and an early film critic.

The Collected Letters will make available her correspondence with other key figures of the time such as H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and the poet Hilda Doolittle.

Dr Helen Oakes, Research Institute for Social Sciences, has received a British Academy Small Grants Award of £5,300 as Principal Investigator, examining the roles of accounting and marketing communications in supporting arts engagement.

The research involves collaboration with a Co-Investigator at the University of Liverpool Management School.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Nine years ago…

Professor Charles Townshend, School of History, addressed a seminar on `Global Security and Terrorism' held at the Headquarters of the NATO Rapid Reaction Corps at Rheindahlen, Germany. He spoke on `The Middle East and the West' to a group including ten generals (British, American and German) and some 200 staff officers from all NATO members. 28 March 2003.