January/ February 2014

Welcome to my new Blog - a new year's resolution to routinely update this. First happy new year to all staff, students and readers of this Blog. 2013 was a challenging year for the school (in a positive way), as we were created. It was always the intention for a School of Biomedicine and Healthcare Sciences (SoBHS) to be created at Plymouth University, and we achieved this on August 1st after growing exponentially from within the school of Biomedical and Biological Sciences. SoBHS moved into our medical school, (Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, PSMD) and we are delighted and excited by this new opportunity. But there is still much to do- we are very ambitious and want to build the finest school delivering Biomedical sciences in the country, and based around a strong research focus within our medical school.

Degree Accreditations and new Masters courses

Late in 2013 we worked very hard in obtaining accreditation from various Professional bodies, including the Health and Care Professions council, the Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists, Healthcare Education England and the Institute for Biomedical Science. Whilst we do not yet have formal approvals (there were conditions required to be met), we are confident that all of our programmes will be accredited by key professional bodies. Our new MSc in Biomedical Sciences has been approved by the academic degrees committee of the University, and we will launch this suite of programmes in September this year.

January 15th marked the closing of UCAS applications, and we are delighted with an upsurge in applications for all of our programmes, which is a continuation of our expansion of the past three years. We have also taken steps so that our graduates have a clearly defined pathway into medicine or dentistry, whilst this must be approved within the University and externally with the GMC and GDC, we are hoping that these enhancements will be in place for our 2015 graduate entry. Our continued expansion in student numbers has allowed us to consider more additions to our academic staffing, three new posts are likely this year.

Research

Research in the school continues to flourish with several new large grants being won over the past six months. We continue to recruit new PhD students, but want more. We are shortly to advertise six PhD bursaries for October 2014 start. These students will drive our research agenda forward, and all projects will be focused on the systems biology investments we have made since 2010.

In January I visited Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as a judge for the King Faisal award in medicine. Prof Dennis Lo from the Chinese University of Hong Kong was awarded this years prize for his work in non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, many congratulations Dennis, well deserved.

Finally, earlier this week the first meeting of the John Bull Building extension project working group met. The University will be investing in a state of the art £12.5 million building to house Biomedical researchers, and thus move our main research labs from main campus to a site adjacent to the current PSMD John Bull building, and close to Derriford hospital. A hugely exciting project, which is going to occupy much of my workload in the next 2-3 years, can’t wait for it to be built!