Review 2010 Contents
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LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY Review 2010 Contents Research Highlights 2 Global 8 Teaching & Learning 11 Enterprise 14 Highlights 2010 17-20 Awards & Appointments 21 London 26 Finance & Investment 30 Professorial Appointments 34 Professorial Promotions 35 People 36 Design studiospecial.com Leadership 37 UCL – London’s Global University We are We are committed • a world-class centre of research and teaching, • to the pursuit of excellence and sustainability dedicated to developing and disseminating original • to maintaining rich academic diversity knowledge to benefit the world of the future embracing the Arts and Sciences • to equality of opportunity and fulfilment We believe of potential for our staff and students • in engaging fully with the world around us • in breaking new ground through We strive always challenging convention • to lead • in progress through partnership • to inspire • to achieve We value • creativity and innovation • integrity • energy • perseverance Introduction Welcome to UCL’s Annual Review for 2010, which I hope will give you a clear picture of the continuing excellence of our staff and students, and of our future aspirations. Despite an exceptionally challenging environment for higher education, it has been a year of exciting developments, and of wonderful achievements from across the UCL community. In October, UCL signed an agreement to become first UK university to establish a campus in Qatar, focusing on Arab and We are entering a wholly new era, and alongside all universities, Islamic archaeology and museums studies. From its opening, we must put ourselves in the place of parents and students who UCL-Q will conduct research of relevance to the Gulf and to the are facing high costs and an uncertain future. In response to Arab world more broadly, with professional courses starting in these changes, UCL must drive out all waste and unnecessary spring 2011, and two masters programmes starting in 2012. cost in its processes, whilst ensuring that we invest in the highest Combined with major institutional partnerships cemented with quality in teaching and student support. It is crucial that the Kazakhstan and China during the year, UCL really lived up to its student experience is excellent across all areas of university life. moniker of London’s global university in 2010. A major estates planning project, the Bloomsbury Masterplan, is currently being developed in order to transform the UCL campus UCL is committed to maximizing the impact of its research, and meet the needs of future generations of students and staff. which includes developing infrastructures which support UCL researchers to work across disciplines and bring their research to bear on public life, from the development of new medicines We are faced by many uncertainties. UCL is operating in an and business ideas, through to evidence-based policy environment of global competition with limited resources. development. 2010 saw the launch of UCL’s first Public Policy Changes in UK policy – such as the current proposals to tighten strategy, building on the role played by many of our academics in and limit immigration – will continue to pose major challenges for formulating policy with governments nationally and internationally. this institution. We have to make our own way, and it will be in a A number of successful UCL enterprises have bloomed in the world where there will be the highest premium to quality, every bit period, including major investment in Endomagnetics, a medical as much in teaching as in research. More than ever before, UCL imaging company sprung from UCL research, and the launch of will need to be consistently excellent and rigorous in order to Mapping for Change, a social enterprise that will support survive and flourish. sustainable communities through online mapping. Every reader of this review will be aware of the unprecedented changes to the funding of higher education that were confirmed in 2010. These changes will influence the future direction of the university, but I am determined that in the coming year we set out an ambitious strategy that is not only financially viable but builds Professor Malcolm Grant on the academic excellence and rigour of the institution. UCL President and Provost UCL Review 2010 1 Research Developing interdisciplinary research and getting ATLAS: Simulated Higgs decaying into four muons the results into policy and practice was central to Image copyright: CERN our activity in 2010. We have 4,000 leading researchers making exciting discoveries Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction, the UCL Centre for and generating advances in specialist knowledge. However, Digital Humanities, the UCL Institute of Sport, Exercise & their collective expertise can be made even greater than the Health, the UCL Jill Dando Centre for Forensic Sciences sum of its parts. Through UCL Grand Challenges we provide and the UCL Computational Life & Medical Sciences Network. opportunities for these researchers to interact across and beyond We are intent that the innovative problem-solving undertaken their conventional disciplinary boundaries: analysing profound through these activities be made compelling to policymakers. and complex problems from multiple perspectives in order to Thus we have established the UCL Public Policy Strategy to develop wise and timely solutions. optimise the impact of our research and expertise on policy During 2010, the opportunities for such interdisciplinary interaction formation and to ensure that our contributions respond to to tackle global problems included the Urban Water Poverty significant and urgent policy issues. workshops, the new Global Migration Symposia series, the UCL –Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities, the Transnational Histories conference and the Carbon Governance research project. Professor David Price Collaborative practices were further embedded through the UCL Vice-Provost (Research) establishment of a variety of inherently interdisciplinary research groups. These included the UCL European Institute, the UCL 2 UCL Review 2010 Research UCL’s role in world’s largest scientific experiment On 30 March, protons collided at seven trillion volts – the highest energies ever achieved by a man-made particle accelerator – at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva. The breakthrough marked the start of a two-year campaign that could see scientists make new discoveries about the universe and answer some of the unresolved questions in physics. The LHC aims to explore the nature of the universe moments after the Big Bang and to improve the understanding of how the Land use, London universe was created, what it is made of and how it will evolve. UCL’s Professor John Butterworth (UCL Physics & Astronomy) is leading the ATLAS detector’s UK team. The LHC will run at seven trillion volts for 18 months to two years to deliver enough data to make significant advances across a wide range a growing and ageing population with Even more disturbingly, people living in of physics areas. With the amount of data more people living alone, the report says poorer areas not only die sooner, but expected, scientists will be able to explore the land system will come under new spend more of their lives with disability a wide mass range, with the possibility of pressures from the rise of the low-carbon – an average total difference of 17 years. discovering the Higgs boson particle, the agenda alongside rising expectations The review has estimated the cost of missing solution to one of the most basic associated with growing incomes, such health inequalities in England as running puzzles in particle physics – why some as more living space, better transport, into more than £50 billion per year from particles possess mass and others do not. and additional health facilities. lost productivity and taxes in addition to healthcare costs. The review also predicts an increase in the cost of treating the Rethinking land management England’s health inequalities various illnesses that result from The country needs a radical rethink of its ‘unfair and unjust’ inequalities in obesity alone to rise from approach to managing land and its use, Most people in England don’t live as £2 billion per year to nearly £5 billion per according to a major report co-authored long as the rich and suffer more ill health, year by 2025. It calls for health inequalities by UCL’s Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones according to the major UCL-led review, to sit alongside tackling climate change as (UCL Bartlett School of Planning), who Fair Society, Healthy Lives, which one of society’s core priorities. Creating is one of the leading experts behind proposes new ways to improve everyone’s a sustainable future is, the review argues, Foresight’s Land Use Futures report. health and reduce inequalities. The compatible with action to reduce health Foresight, part of the Government Office government asked Professor Sir Michael inequalities: sustainable local communities, for Science, is a thinktank that informs the Marmot (UCL Epidemiology & Public active transport, sustainable food strategic and long-term choices facing Health) to conduct the independent production, and zero carbon houses will government departments, business and review. It concluded that, although health all have health benefits across society. the general public. It looks at how inequalities are normally associated with landscapes and land use could change the poor, premature illness and death over the next 50 years. The report outlines affects everyone below the wealthiest the findings of a two-year study involving tier of English society. People living in more than 300 experts in subjects ranging the most deprived neighbourhoods will from ecology, economics, planning and on average die seven years earlier than geography. As well as climate change and people living in the richest neighbourhoods. UCL Review 2010 3 Research Focus on: Improving newborn survival rates Women’s community groups have had a dramatic effect on reducing neonatal mortality rates in some of the poorest areas in India, according to new UCL research published in The Lancet.