2018 TEZ ILYAS FROM SCIENCE TO STAND-UP COMEDIAN MEDICAL ADVANCES A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR LANCASTER’S MEDICAL SCHOOL WWW.LANCASTER.AC.UK/ALUMNI Keep in touch www.lancaster.ac.uk/alumni Welcome Contents In a world facing many dramas and challenges, 03 15 it is good to open this 2018 edition of Steps Medical University News focusing on positive news. 07 As I hope you will already Groundbreakers Updates and developments about know, Lancaster is The Joking Apart your University and its forthcoming Times and The Sunday A glimpse of the future developments projects. Times Good University’s for Lancaster’s Medical School and Meet alumnus Tez Ilyas, now Guide’s University of the Health Innovation Campus. Year for 2018. stand-up comedian, who talks about his Lancaster days. Easier by Email Do we have your current email address? Most of our communications use email for speed 09 and to restrict the amount of paper we use. To ensure you receive our Enews and event invitations, please Raising The Bar email us at [email protected] Profiles of two of Lancaster’s law 17 and we will verify that we have the graduates at different stages in appropriate information for all future their careers. A Family Affair communications. Also, if you move house, please contact us and we Alumna Lucy Briers reflects on her will update your address for your time at Lancaster and subsequent copy of STEPS. You can also let us 05 acting career. know by using the form provided with this magazine. This accolade, alongside our highest We continue to seek strong academic ever UK league table placing (6th), partnerships across the globe, to Alumni in Print We look forward to hearing from you. is testimony to the hard work of continue our original mission, enrich 11 Keep in touch! everyone involved with the University. the student experience and enhance A selection of books published 19 Added to a Gold standard award under the impact and value of our research. by Lancaster alumni. Alumni: the new Teaching Excellence Framework I close (as I did last year!) with a reference Making a and scores of 91% for student to the new General Data Protection satisfaction and 97% for graduates Friends For Life Published by: Regulation (GDPR), implemented in Difference Development & Alumni Relations Office in employment or further study three May. We have always regarded it as an A round-up of alumni events held E: [email protected] years out from Lancaster, the last twelve Highlighting why our alumni and important duty to protect your data and across the world in the past year. Additional Contributors: Rachel Pugh months have brought considerable 06 supporters feel moved to give and Ellen Logan GDPR adds to the safeguards. Do please back to Lancaster. success to your University. read the information about keeping in Designed and produced by: The year has also seen us build contact by email and help us to ensure The Big Day www.fusiondesign.co.uk further on our founding vision to widen we have the appropriate permissions Cover image: Graduates who met at Lancaster Tez Ilyas. Image © Steve Ullathorne participation in higher education. from you to allow us to stay in touch! A good example of this was the inaugural Maintaining contact with our growing and have married in the past twelve months. The articles printed here, to the best of graduation, last September, of ninety alumni network is critical to us. You are 13 21 our knowledge, were correct at the time of students at Lancaster University Ghana Lancaster’s Third Estate (alongside going to press. We cannot guarantee that in Accra; a vibrant and happy occasion students and staff) and I cannot Lancaster Honorary all articles submitted have been printed and delivered with wonderful exuberance. overstate the importance of your we reserve the right to edit material where Most recently, this mission has seen advice, support and advocacy to our necessary. Furthermore, the views expressed University Degrees and in this magazine are not necessarily those of us partner with the Manchester United continuing success. Lancaster University or the Editor. ‘Class of ’92’, led by Gary Neville, and I hope you find plenty to interest you in in Ghana Alumni Awards Steps is available to view online at corporate giant, Microsoft, to develop this edition of Steps and look forward to www.lancaster.ac.uk/alumni as a PDF. A celebration of Lancaster’s first Awards presented during the 2017 an innovative educational offering in engaging with you over the coming year. If you require this magazine in another format, the form of University Academy 92. graduation at our campus in Ghana. Graduation Ceremonies. please contact the Alumni & Development Professor Mark E. Smith Office. Vice-Chancellor 1 STEPS 2018 - 2 Keep in touch www.lancaster.ac.uk/alumni NEWLY QUALIFIED DOCTORS GRADUATING FROM LANCASTER MEDICAL SCHOOL HAVE THE ADVANTAGE OF A VITAL SKILL ABOVE THEIR ACADEMIC GROUNDING, TO EQUIP THEM FOR A FAST-CHANGING NHS SYSTEM WITH RAFTS OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND POPULATION CHANGES. IT’S CALLED ADAPTABILITY. Medical Groundbreakers Artist’s Impression of the Health Innovation Campus Head of Lancaster Medical School, The next major advance will be the health medicine with an interest in Dr Rachel Isba Dr Rachel Isba says: “I think Lancaster building of medical school premises, as emergency medicine - thought to be the HEALTH INNOVATION CAMPUS Head of medical students are a resilient bunch, part of the construction of the Lancaster only public health consultant to be based Lancaster they have to be, to catch the bus at 7am University’s Health Innovation Campus in an NHS emergency department in this The Health Innovation Campus A new director, Dr Sherry Kothari Medical School to make their way from Lancaster City (HIC), set to complete its £41m first phase way in England. to Barrow for clinical placements. in 2019. The HIC will provide a focal point (HIC) which is currently under has recently been appointed as One of her goals is to raise the profile of construction on a 32,000m2 site next Director of the Health Innovation “My vision is to bring doctors for the medical school which is currently Lancaster Medical School. She is excited housed across campus. to the University, is designed to be Campus and will join the University to graduation who have a good to see some of the first intake emerging a game-changer for both teaching in September 2018. understanding of their patients, but also Dr Isba believes that the HIC will be good from postgraduate training and becoming and research, by focusing on helping Head of the University’s Health the populations from which they are news for staff, students and the local local GPs. This trend is likely to continue people to live longer and better lives Engagement and Innovation Team, drawn and the context in which they population as it will provide the kind of as more Lancaster graduates choose and to be supported in home settings Professor John Goodacre, who is one live. We also have a good track record inter-disciplinary learning environment to stay in the region for postgraduate with the best digital and technological Adaptability - alongside problem- of the academic leads for the HIC, of producing doctors who go to work where a wide range of individuals and training or return later in their careers. support. This will not only require the solving and community-facing care says: “The main intention of the HIC in shortage specialities such as general organisations can join in exploring development of new materials and - drives the ethos of Lancaster’s The complexities of predicting what kind is to help improve population health practice and psychiatry and who are innovative approaches to find new techniques, but also innovative ways medical school, which admitted its of medics will be required in 10 years - by building on our strong reputation good communicators.” solutions to current and future health of thinking about the way we all live, first students in 2006 to produce let alone further ahead - are challenging for interdisciplinary teaching and problems. in order to improve health. more doctors for the under- The summer of 2017 saw the graduation at a time of massive medical discovery, research. It is also intended to be doctored Lancashire and Cumbria of the first cohort of medical students to She says “Our medical students already organisational change across the NHS HIC is funded by the University and a driver for economic growth in area and to encourage young receive a Lancaster University MBChB. have the opportunity to work with a wide and alterations in population disease through the Lancashire Enterprise a local area where there is a lack people from the region to go From the school’s inception in 2006, variety of colleagues across a range of patterns. Recruitment of medical students Partnership’s Growth Deal Fund and of employment, using the strong into medicine. until 2016, students studying on university disciplines, as Lancaster prides from a wider range of backgrounds forms the European Structural and partnerships we already have with the Bailrigg campus did so under a itself on the fact that work around health a key part of Lancaster’s strategy to train As one of the UK’s newest (and smallest) Investment Fund. the health sector, business and the partnership agreement with Liverpool takes place in all parts of the University. a future workforce. third sector.“ public medical schools, Lancaster is Medical School until the General Medical Construction of the £41 million first The HIC, however, will offer students the “There’s no fixed point, looking ahead, ranked ninth in the Guardian’s Student Council approved its own degree- phase of the building, adjacent to the chance to cross paths with others from except that patients will always need Guide for 2018.