your manchester The University of Manchester Alumni Magazine May 2005
Beattie: Big Brother and Beyond
New University Unwrapped Secrets of the Amazon Earthquake Prediction Our Literary Elite Finding Old Friends YOUR MANCHESTER 1
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16 ‘Your Manchester’ is published by Communications and Marketing Services in conjunction with the Development and Alumni Relations Office, The University of Manchester. For further information concerning any of the articles in this issue please contact: Donna Prince, Co-ordinating Editor/Alumni Officer, The University of Manchester, G9 Christie Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL. telephone +44 (0) 161 306 3066 fax +44 (0) 161 306 8066 email d.prince@manchester.ac.uk The articles printed here, to the best of our knowledge, were correct at the time of going to press. We cannot guarantee that all articles submitted will be printed and we reserve the right to edit material where necessary. Furthermore, the views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of The University of Manchester, The University of Manchester Alumni Association, or the Editor.
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welcome
to your manchester Dear Graduate,
Contents The News
4
Decisions
8
Secrets of the Amazon: A Puzzling People
10
Animal Magnetism
12
Aids Breakthrough
14
Not Just a Famous Face: Professor Beattie
16
Royal Launch for University
18
The Manchester 2015 Agenda
20
Traditional with a Twist
22
Ground Breaking Research: Earthquake Predictions
26
A Way with Words
28
Village Life: Owens Park
30
Alumni Association News
32
A Degree of Celebration, Singapore
36
Development News
38
Enriching the Social Wealth of the City
42
GiftShop
44
I am pleased to welcome you to this first edition of “Your Manchester”, the new magazine for graduates of The University of Manchester. The past year has been a very exciting one for the University. The merger between UMIST and the Victoria University of Manchester was hailed by the Prime Minister as one of the “boldest and most ambitious moves” in worldwide higher education and Her Majesty The Queen offered some very kind words of praise and encouragement when she visited the campus to present our new Royal Charter on 22 October 2004. A merger between two research intensive universities has never been achieved before in Britain and it is a tribute to the efforts of all my colleagues – and the two previous vice-chancellors - that such a major change was negotiated and delivered with so little disruption to our core activities of research and scholarship. My first year here in Manchester has been spent working with the Board of Governors and my senior colleagues to devise and begin to deliver a strategy for reconstituting and repositioning The University of Manchester over the next decade as one of the world’s best universities. The Inauguration of the new University and our ambitious agenda for the future are covered on pages 18 and 19 of this magazine. The other stories featured in this first edition of “Your Manchester” have been chosen to give you a flavour of some of the interesting and exciting work being conducted at the University and to illustrate how the campus and the city have changed since you were a student here. Our alumni community of more than 180,000 graduates, spread across the globe, represents one of the University’s greatest assets. Your receipt of this magazine is proof that you have kept the University updated with your contact details and I would like to thank you for your continuing support and involvement. I am delighted that two of our most distinguished graduates, Anna Ford and Sir Terry Leahy, have agreed to stay on and serve as Co-Chancellors of the University. They are powerful and influential ambassadors for the University and “living proof” of the value of a Manchester education and degree. I am pleased too that Andrew Spinoza has agreed to serve as the first Chairman of the University’s new Alumni Association. I know that Andrew and the Association have many exciting projects planned which should make it easier for you to keep in touch with the University. These include a new website and alumni e-news service for those of you with email accounts. A number of alumni events and reunions have been scheduled for next few months (see page 33) and many more are planned for the future. I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible at one of these events and to welcoming you back to Manchester at some point in the near future. Professor Alan Gilbert President and Vice-Chancellor
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thenews Stamping out Superbugs with Essential Oils Essential oils used in aromatherapy have been found to kill the deadly MRSA bacteria, new research reveals. Tests show that three essential oils can kill MRSA and E.coli, as well as many other bacteria and fungi, within just two minutes of contact. Now clinical trials of the oils are to go ahead thanks to a generous donation from former DJ Sir Jimmy Saville. Peter Warn from the University’s School of Medicine said: “We believe our discovery could revolutionise the fight to combat MRSA and other super bugs.”
Dig Manchester! University staff in the Archaeology Unit are working on the City Council’s hugely successful ‘Dig Manchester’ project which is to be expanded thanks to a £500,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Dig Manchester began in Moston, bringing together the local community, schools and businesses, in an excavation of Moston Old Hall. Robina McNeil, Director of The Greater Manchester Archaeology Unit, said the project had achieved some impressive results: “The idea was to involve the local community in a dig to uncover some history but also to bring about a sense of community and pride. The results were far more positive than we could have imagined.” Businesses provided lunches for people on the dig, local school children became really interested in archaeology and a sense of community pride emerged that was not there before - the crime rate for the area dropped by 45 per cent whilst the dig was underway! The scheme has been so successful that the team applied for funding to begin similar projects in Northenden and Wythenshawe, and the award will help to fund two new members of staff to co-ordinate the project. 4 YOUR MANCHESTER
The world’s first university course studying the impact of war - rather than its causes - is being launched at The University of Manchester. The Masters degree in War, Culture and History will investigate the effect of war on the people caught up in conflict. Aspects of the course will run in conjunction with the Trafford- based Imperial War Museum North, and it is hoped that some of the students work could be shown there. Students will also have the chance to make a film or documentary about experiences of war, focusing on people in the North West and their memories of conflict. The course is being led by Ana Carden-Coyne, who recently joined Manchester from the University of Sydney in Australia. She is also one of the Directors of the Centre for the Cultural History of War which opened in April 2004. “We are not looking at the facts of war - what causes them or how they work - we are more interested in looking at the impact of war on culture,” she said. “This is a socially useful type of history, which looks at a wide range of subjects, including the psychological issues of trauma, population movements and recovery from war.” “I’m particularly excited about the filming aspect of the course, which we hope will help to uncover the hidden voices of war and people’s testimonies. We want to involve people from a wide range of communities including refugees and survivors of war,” she added. The course is just one of four new MA programmes which are being developed by the University’s School of Arts, Histories and Cultures. Students will be taught by some of the world’s leading historians, who are based at The University of Manchester. The other MA degrees on offer are: MA in the History of North West England; MA in Victorian Studies; MA in Colonial and Postcolonial History
Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
Studying People Caught up in Conflict
Courtesy of the University of British Columbia
£50 million Research Centre in Honour of Nobel Laureate The first of three state-of-the-art facilities that will eventually form one of the largest biomedical complexes in Europe was officially opened in March. The new £50 million Michael Smith Building, named in honour of the late Nobel Laureate, will be home to 800 University of Manchester scientists drawn largely from the Faculty of Life Sciences. By 2007 the 10,000 sq metre facility will be connected to two more new developments to create a biomedical hub at the forefront of international research. “The complex is sited at a central location in the University’s biomedical corridor,” said Professor Martin Humphries, Associate Dean for Research within the Faculty of Life Sciences. “Over the past 10 years, a major programme of cell-biological research has been established here in Manchester and a major benefit of the design of the new building has been to cluster core facilities and provide easily accessible resources for researchers.” The Michael Smith Building will house more than 100 research groups including a number of externally funded centres, such as The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research, The North of England Structural Biology Centre and The UK Centre for Tissue Engineering. The complex is named after Dr Michael Smith who was an alumnus of The University of Manchester, graduating in Chemistry in 1953 before continuing his postgraduate studies in the same department. He received his PhD in 1956 and then moved to Gobind Khorana’s laboratory in Vancouver, Canada, where, as a postgraduate fellow, he studied the synthesis of biologically important organophosphates. In 1966, he was appointed a University of British Columbia Professor of Biochemistry and received the Nobel Prize in 1993 for developing the technique of site-directed mutagenesis. He died in 2000, aged 68.
Dentist is Star Lecturer Iain Mackie, a paediatric dental expert in The University Dental School, has become a National Teaching Fellow in recognition of his exceptional work with students. The Higher Education Academy presented a prestigious Fellowship award worth £50,000 to Dr Mackie, who has worked at the University teaching dental students for 20 years as well as treating patients and carrying out research in the field. A Senior Lecturer in the Unit of Paediatric Dentistry, Dr Mackie is a national authority on the management of dental trauma in children following accidents. He has written books that are used for teaching in other countries and has helped to develop standard professional protocols for dealing with paediatric dental trauma. Dr Mackie plans to use his award to develop the country’s first integrated undergraduate course to be piloted at the Dental School. The course will bring together dentists, dental therapists and dental hygienists, who have traditionally been taught separately, in order to encourage team learning. Describing the importance of fun in student learning, he said: “I think it is extremely important to keep the students involved so that they take an active role in the whole teaching, learning and assessment process. It is very important that the learning process is enjoyable and the students remain happy and enthusiastic, and I try to maintain a humourous and practical approach.”
Dr Smith’s son, Tom, flew in from Vancouver especially for the ceremony, to open the new facility. He said he was honoured to open the new building: “I know that my father would be excited about, and proud of, the new facility named in his honour. “He had a tremendous passion for new knowledge, and the Michael Smith Building will continue that legacy at his Alma Mater. I speak for my entire family when I say we are especially happy to see Michael honoured in his own country. “We all have deep roots in Canada but we also have fond memories of our visits to the Lancashire region, including Michael’s birthplace of Blackpool.” YOUR MANCHESTER 5
thenews Researchers turn to brainpower to beat dementia
A team of researchers from The University of Manchester will be asking members of the high-IQ society Mensa for DNA samples in what will be the world’s most sophisticated study of brainpower. The research will allow the team to find genes associated with intelligence and examine how they interact with each other. “Scientists are interested in intelligence genes because high intelligence protects against the onset of dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease,” explained Dr Tony Payton, who works in the University’s Centre for Integrated Genomic Medical Research (CIGMR) and is leading the research. Increasing our understanding of the role that genes play in regulating intelligence may help in the development of new diagnostic tests and more effective treatments to combat cognitive impairment in the elderly.
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However studying genes in combination with each other is difficult because, according to Dr Payton, the statistical power of the research is reduced considerably: “Selecting individuals who represent the extreme end of the IQ distribution increases this power dramatically. For example, 200 volunteers with an IQ of 145 is equivalent to using 100,000 unselected volunteers.” The results of the Mensa research will complement data collected from an earlier University of Manchester study of some 2,500 elderly people. Over the last 20 years the research has assessed these volunteers for changes in cognitive function, creating the second largest DNA archive in the world - the Dyne Steele DNA bank. Already the researchers have uncovered two genes associated with general cognitive ability, while work elsewhere has identified a further 10 ‘intelligence genes’.
“The study of intelligence is shrouded by historical, biological, ethical and descriptive complexities that have made a mockery of its intended definition to reason and understand,” said Dr Payton. Although our understanding of the biological basis of intelligence is still at an early stage, Dr Payton said a general consensus about the role genes play in determining the level of intelligence had now been reached. Theoretically, the research with Mensa will be the most powerful approach ever adopted in this field Dr Payton said. “Combining this study with the Mensa research will take cognitive genetic research to an altogether new level and maintain The University of Manchester’s position as a world leader in the field,” he said.
Mummy’s Face Unwrapped The University’s Unit of Art in Medicine has helped to create a unique 3D image of the face of an Egyptian mummy, using virtual computer technology. Working with the British Museum, a mummy of Nesperennub, a priest from the temple of Khons who lived in 800 BC, was chosen to undergo the first ever virtual unwrapping using data obtained from a CT scanner. The forensic investigation involved facial reconstruction made possible by a new computer system developed by facial anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, Manager of the Unit of Art in Medicine. Dr Wilkinson said: “This unique computerised facial reconstruction system allows us to feel as well as visualise the skull of an ancient Egyptian without unwrapping the mummy. Our work has revealed the facial appearance of this priest and I am privileged to have been involved in this remarkable investigation.” The virtual sculpture uses haptic feedback which is a touch-based application of 3D design allowing the practitioner to feel the skull depicted on the computer screen and to examine it interactively in 3D stereo.
First Image of Dying Star A dramatic new image showing a dying star surrounded by hailstones 4000 light years away has been unveiled by University astrophysicists. The star is the hottest known to astronomers - at least 250,000 degrees C and has never been seen before. But now the image from the Hubble telescope shows vast walls of compressed gas laced with trailing strands and bubbling outflows. A dark dusty ring surrounds the inner nebula which is something of an enigma to astronomers. Albert Zijlstra from the School of Physics and Astronomy is leading a team probing the secrets of this extreme object: “What caught our interest in Bug Nebula NGC 6302 was the mixture of minerals and crystalline ice hailstones frozen onto small dust grains,” he said. “Very few objects have such a mixed composition.” Astronomers believe the nebula was expelled some 10,000 years ago but do not understand yet how it was formed, or how long the dust ring can survive evaporation.
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Decisions, decisi Whether it’s BMWs or biscuits, consumers have never had so much choice. But how can we make sure we make the right buying decisions? New research in the Business School could signal the end of the road for dithering
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ions…
Jeremy Clarkson’s days as a motoring guru could be numbered with the development of a new computer programme that can make informed decisions when it comes to buying a new car. Of course, the software cannot compete with the Top Gear presenter’s legendary charm and wit but it could help you choose between an X-Type and S-Type by making intelligent comparisons, just like the TV presenter himself. The software package, developed by a team led by Jian-Bo Yang at the Business School, is so advanced it can tailor its decision making to an individual’s needs, preferences and personal tastes - unlike existing expert systems which now seem crude by comparison. “It can even take into consideration the size of your wallet or whether you have any preconceived prejudices, like Jeremy’s dislike of diesels,” Professor Yang said. The programme is unique, he added, because of its ability to analyse and assess subjective human judgements. “The methodology behind the software enables it to refine qualitative information and use it, together with statistical data in the decision-making process.” The software, which is currently being patented, will be particularly useful to companies when justifying decisions - like choosing their car fleets for example because the programme can do all the leg work and explain why one type of car was chosen over another.
samples but the results can vary widely and are completely subjective.” The software is able to make use of such judgemental information in the decisionmaking process – “That is what makes it unique,” he said. Applications in a number of other fields are already in the pipeline, including the analysis of human errors in engineering equipment, food-quality analysis and even a comparison of the productivity of nations. Indeed, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has hailed the research behind the new programme’s methodology as “internationally leading” in its potential scientific impact, with possible “outstanding” benefits to society. The concept behind the software is known as ‘evidential reasoning’ (ER), which Professor Yang has been researching for more than 20 years.
The software is currently being tried as a way of analysing customer preferences for different fizzy drink flavours
But as well as threatening to make Clarkson redundant, the software has numerous other uses. The food and drinks industry for example is already showing an interest as the system could help manufacturers to select flavours which will appeal most to buyers, offering significant savings on product development time. The software is currently being tried as a way of analysing customer preferences for different fizzy drink flavours, making judgments about whether customers would prefer sweet, acidic, bitter, peely, zesty, fruity, juicy, limey or floral tasting drinks. A biscuit company is also using the system as a way of selecting different biscuit shapes, smells, textures and flavours to attract the biggest audience. “There have been statistical-analysis programmes before but they have their limits,” said Professor Yang. “For example in flavour selection, individuals taste and grade food
“The ER approach allows subjective judgments and numerical data to be described side by side under the same framework,” he said. “The strengths and weaknesses of each option can be recorded and the information processed through reasoning that has its roots in artificial intelligence.”
Personal preferences are imbedded into the reasoning process which then mimics how people reach a conclusion while dealing with more complicated decisionmaking problems in a systematic and transparent fashion. Professor Yang says the software’s uses are manifold, and as well as new product development future research projects could include risk and safety analysis; performance assessment; resource allocation; environmental impact analysis; organisational performance measurement; and supply chain modelling . “Many decision problems are characterised by multiple criteria of both a quantitative and qualitative nature,” Professor Yang said. “Decision information can often be random, incomplete and vague, possibly due to the decision maker’s inability to provide precise judgments. Such uncertain information creates huge complexity in preference modelling and decision analysis, which poses a significant challenge to today’s businesses.” Professor Yang is now hoping to find collaborators from inside and outside the University to put the programme to good use.
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Courtesy of Julia Reinbold
A puzzling people Dan Everett has spent almost his entire career studying the culture and language of Amazonian people, focusing lately on a small group of hunter gatherers who for some reason cannot learn to count
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After living with the Pirahã people for some years Professor Everett, a renowned linguist, has concluded that theirs is the only known language not to contain numbers or even a concept of counting. Furthermore, Pirahã is thought to be the only language without colour words, and its people do not draw, except for extremely crude stick figures representing the spirit world. The Pirahãs have become a much sought after source of investigation by linguists in recent years, but there is little agreement on the reasons behind the Pirahã’s seemingly unique language evolution. Professor Everett, who says he came into linguistics serendipitously, got hooked: “I have always been interested in languages, largely due to hearing Spanish spoken all around me when I was growing up on the Mexican border where my dad worked as a cowboy, bartender, and mechanic. But I really wanted to be a musician.”
All that was to change when, on a trip with the school band to Hollywood, he went to see the film My Fair Lady and became transfixed by the work of fictional linguist Henry Higgins. A few years later he met Keren, a young woman later to become his wife, who had been raised in a tribal village in Brazil. And so began a life long fascination with the Amazonian people and its languages. So what are the Pirahã like, and what can we learn from them? They are a technologically primitive river people living as hunters and gatherers with very little agriculture, according to Professor Everett. They eat mainly fish, wild fruit and nuts, depending on the time of year. They sometimes boil their fish and make a soup, but mainly they just throw the bigger fish directly on to a fire. Professor Everett found that despite knowing how to preserve meat by smoking, drying, and salting, the Pirahã never did this except to
In 1980, at the Pirahã’s urging, Professor Everett and his American wife began a series of evening classes in counting and literacy to see whether the people could learn to count. “My entire family participated, with my three children (9, 6, and 3 at that time) sitting with Pirahã men and women and working with them. Each evening for eight months my wife would try to teach Pirahã men and women to count to ten in Portuguese. They wanted to learn this because they knew that they did not understand trade relations and wanted to be able to tell whether or not they were being cheated - or so they told us.”
Professor Dan Everett Courtesy of Gerald Silke
trade meat with outsiders. They say, 'I store my meat in the belly of my brother', because they share with those who need meat, never storing up for the future. They produce beautiful, strong, bows and arrows for hunting. They also make very crudely woven baskets for transporting material from the fields. “They wear necklaces from seeds and home spun cotton string, using teeth, feathers, beads, beer can pull-tabs or other objects that show little symmetry and are very crude and unattractive compared to the artefacts of other groups in the region,” Professor Everett said. “Their primary purpose is to ward off the evil spirits they see almost daily.” The men wear leather loin-cloths and the women go naked when there is no supply of cloth. While the men will wear gym or Bermuda shorts received from trade deals with outsiders, women refuse ready made dresses, making their own garments following a universal pattern.
After eight months of daily efforts – without ever needing to call the Pirahãs to come for class - the people concluded that they could not learn this material and classes were abandoned. Not one Pirahã learned to count to ten in eight months. None learned reliably to add 3+1 or even 1+1. “Similarly we were never able to train a Pirahã to even draw a straight line without serious coaching and they are never able to repeat the feat in subsequent trials without more coaching. The concept of a correct way to draw is profoundly foreign.” Professor Everett says he is deeply concerned for the future of the Pirahã thanks to the ever more intrusive presence of settlers: “Their language is not endangered by their own attitudes but it is endangered, as are many others, because the Pirahã themselves are endangered by Western diseases, alcohol, and the inexorable changing world that we live in.” “This beautiful language and culture, so fundamentally different from anything the Western world has produced, has much to teach us about linguistic theory, about culture, about human nature, about living for each day and letting the future take care of itself, about personal fortitude, toughness, love, and many other values too numerous to mention. And this is but one example of many other endangered languages and cultures in the Amazon and elsewhere with 'riches' of a similar nature that we may never know about because of our own shortsightedness.”
Courtesy of Keren Everett
Toys for children are normally not found, though they will play with dolls and other toys from the outside. The people know how to make spinning tops, whistles, toy canoes, and carved dolls, but they never do so unless asked.
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Professor Andre Geim
Flying frogs and real-life spidermen may sound like science-fiction, but in the last five years Andre Geim has turned fantasy into reality and managed to convince colleagues that his work is not a hoax
Professor Geim is one of the world’s leading meseoscopic physicists, studying and constructing electronic devices on a minute scale. On paper you’d expect him to be your archetypal physicist. He talks about ‘matter’ and scientific terms trip off his tongue, but what sets him apart is his extraordinary ability to not only produce research which consistently breaks new ground, but also to capture the imaginations of the media and the general public - as well as other scientists. Professor Geim’s work first caught the media’s attention while he was investigating the concept of diamagnetism - the idea that objects which are believed to be non-magnetic, like plastic or wood, actually have magnetic properties. “Forces associated with diamagnetism are so weak that it is never on people’s minds,” he says. “Such things as water or, say, an apple
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Animal Magnetism are thought to be completely non-magnetic. Even scientists routinely working with the strongest magnetic fields perceive them as virtually non-magnetic.” “But what we discovered was that a magnetic field of 10 Tesla - which is only 100 times stronger than the field of a fridge magnet – was strong enough to lift "nonmagnetic" substances.” The concept of diamagnetism has been around for over 150 years, but no one had ever demonstrated it, which is exactly what Professor Geim and his team set out to do. They levitated drops of water, bits of plastic and even pizza, but their findings were met with scepticism by the scientific world who dubbed the experiments a hoax. In the end it was their decision to levitate a small frog which brought their work, and what they had achieved, to light.
“When I first told my colleagues that we could levitate water no one believed it. They thought I was pulling their leg,” he said. “We needed a provocative picture to demonstrate the importance of magnetism and we chose a small frog.” “We had initially aimed the experiments at school children, but the greatest impact of the experiments was on the scientific community. As a result of what we demonstrated, people now extensively use magnetic fields in research and there are now around ten different groups with levitation facilities across the UK.” In 2000 Professor Geim went on to win the IgNobel Prize – awarded for something that first makes people laugh, then makes them think for his levitating frog experiment. Three years later he would again capture the world’s imagination, but this time, not using frogs, but a small lizard called a Gecko.
In June 2003 Professor Geim’s research hit the headlines – ‘Spiderman Becomes a Reality at The University of Manchester’ - when it was announced that he, and his research team at the University, had developed a new type of adhesive which was sticky enough to allow people to hang from ceilings and walk up walls. Professor Geim and his team had developed a new micro-fabricated adhesive, based on the same principle which underlies the amazing climbing ability of the Gecko. Many academics and researchers had been working on the elusive ‘Gecko Tape’ concept for years. This was a world-first. Both the media and the public soaked up the hype surrounding Gecko Tape, and as time went on, the story appeared in more and more newspapers and websites around the world. Media Relations Officer Jo Grady, who coordinated the publicity for the announcement, recalls: “Media interest in Professor Geim's research always reaches fever pitch. His work on 'Gecko Tape' was featured across the board, from the FT, The Times, Nature and The Economist, to the BBC, Channel 4 and ITN.” The success of Gecko Tape came as a surprise to Professor Geim, mainly due to the fact that adhesion is not his field of expertise. But it would be his uniquely open-minded approach to exploring related fields of research that would lead him on to his next big discovery. In 2004 Professor Geim’s work was back in the headlines when he and his research team in Russia announced the discovery of the world’s first one atom thick fabric – Graphene. The team had succeeded in producing the thinnest fabric ever made - with incredible potential for use in future ultra-fast electronics. It was also very promising for the development of a whole range
of other products including ultra-safe car chassis and thin, flexible bullet proof vests. “The potential for the fabric is huge,” he said. “At the moment we are at the development stage, and there is quite a bit to be done before we know how much impact there will be, but I hope that Graphene, in terms of science, will be as important a discovery as the frog was in terms of visibility, application and education.” Professor Geim insists that what appears to be an uncanny knack for producing publicity-friendly research isn’t deliberate, but at the same time he is also very aware of the importance of making science more accessible to a wider audience. “You can make any piece of research appear boring or mediocre,” he says. “Most papers which are published struggle to explain how the research applies to real-life situations, but you have to work at it to make your message understood by the wider community. If something is of interest we will never miss the opportunity to publicise it.” Andre Geim is Professor of Condensed Matter Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy. He has published over 100 peer-refereed research papers, including six articles in prestigious Nature and Science and more than a dozen papers in Nature Materials and Physical Review Letters.
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Dr Curtis Dobson
Chemical quest signa New anti-viral compounds being developed by scientists at the University could lead to a future cure for HIV
Life Sciences researcher Curtis Dobson has recently uncovered chemicals that can block the HIV virus in a completely new way. “The way these compounds react with the virus could, theoretically, lead to a potential cure for HIV,” said Dr Dobson, who works on the interaction between human proteins and viruses. “The big question is whether a vaccine will be found in the meantime. By all accounts, we are still a very long way off.” Dr Dobson stresses that the research is in its infancy, and it could be many years before the compounds, known as apolipovirs, are developed into drugs to fight a virus that threatens the lives of some 38 million people. HIV, which was discovered following the first AIDS diagnosis in 1981, works by invading a cell and taking over its nucleus. The virus then makes copies of itself and infects other cells in the body. There are currently four types of drugs used to combat the virus and prevent sufferers from developing AIDS, which to date has claimed 20 million lives worldwide.
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Two types of drug – known as reverse transcriptase inhibitors – prevent the virus replicating its genetic material, while the third type – protease inhibitors – stop new virus particles from being put together before they can leave the infected cell. The fourth group of drugs are known as fusion inhibitors and act much earlier against the virus, at the point where it fuses with the cell membrane or surface. Dr Dobson has discovered compounds that act even sooner, stopping the bug before it attaches itself to the cell. “In theory, if the virus cannot enter the cell, it will die,” says Dr Dobson. And cells infected by HIV prior to treatment with the new compounds would also eventually die, hopefully taking the virus with them. This way of fighting viruses outside the cell has been overlooked in the past and a lot more research is needed, he said. “Whether antiviral drugs will provide a cure on their own remains to be seen but that will be a focus of the next stage of our work. The compounds are certainly a potential new form
als Aids breakthrough of treatment for HIV and other viruses, like herpes and hepatitis.” In the first nine months of the research Dr Dobson said the team developed compounds 10 times stronger than their original parts. Three patent applications have been filed and a programme of further tests are being put together as the final stage of the pre-clinical work. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that nine out of 10 people in urgent need of HIV-beating drugs don’t currently receive them. “Access to antiretroviral treatment and other HIV-related disease care remains low,” it says. “Around five to six million people in developing countries will die in the next two years if they do not receive treatment.” Rates of infection, says WHO, are on the increase in many countries including in the United States and Western Europe. In sub-Saharan Africa, the worst affected region, three million people became newly infected in 2003 alone. And with new epidemics advancing unchecked in Eastern Europe and Asia, there are huge
challenges to turning the tide of what Nelson Mandela referred to as a “tragedy of unprecedented proportions”.
examining the interaction of human proteins with the virus that the apolipovir compounds were developed.
Recent concerns about a new, more virulent strain of HIV which is resistant to current drugs have heightened fears of a new wave of infections.
Dr Dobson’s research also found that some of the chemicals have anti-bacterial properties and could help prevent the spread of other sexually transmitted diseases, like chlamydia and syphilis, which are both on the increase in the UK.
But hope may lie in the apolipovir compounds which Dr Dobson believes could prevent drugresistant strains from taking hold. “In addition to preventing the virus entering the cells, the chemicals may actually damage parts of the virus which are fundamental, and cannot be changed in future generations of HIV,” he said. “ This might prevent development of viral resistance. But, again, not enough research has been carried out and so it is only a theoretical possibility at the moment.” Dr Dobson’s research stems from work he originally carried out with colleagues at the University looking at the role of viruses in certain forms of dementia. Professor Ruth Itzhaki who is leading that research believes the herpes virus plays a part in the onset of Alzheimer’s and it was through
Research in this area is investigating the use of the compounds alongside contraceptives to prevent the spread of infection. The project’s first active application, however, looks set to be in the coating of contact lenses to prevent infections of the eye, and the coating of medical equipment more widely is another possible use. The University’s intellectual property company, UMIP, is managing the work, which gained initial, early-stage funding from the Genetics Innovation Network. The research was also recently voted Project of the Year at the annual Northwest Biotechnology Awards ceremony hosted by the Northwest Development Agency programme, Bionow.
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If you’re one of the 7.7 million people who watch Big Brother, Channel 4’s top-rated reality TV show, Geoffrey Beattie will be a familiar face. But there is a more serious side to Manchester’s number one media don
Professor Geoffrey Beattie
Not just a
Famous Face Thanks to his expertise in the micro-analysis of behaviour, especially non-verbal communication, Professor Beattie is resident psychologist to Big Brother. But becoming a media star – he has also appeared on The Salon, Diet Trials, Child of our Time, Tomorrow’s World, even Richard and Judy - has not dimmed his academic reputation. Far from it. His own “reality” is his work as an academic with an international standing, being Dean of the School of Psychological Sciences and author of a score of books. His writing spans from his protestant working-class upbringing in Belfast, to an analysis of speech and non-verbal conversation through to the world of professional boxing. He is an entertaining writer and speaker and, yes, he does use his hands a lot. Professor Beattie is responsible for a new theory of human communication suggesting that the brain sends messages not just to the speech
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stream, but also to the accompanying gestures. He is the man responsible for introducing the telling phrase “iconic gesture” to the nation. Having a conversation with him is lively, goodhumoured and enlightening, if a little disconcerting. After all, you’re facing an expert who can interpret what your hand movements are communicating which may not be the same as what’s coming out of your mouth. He says: “The research has demonstrated that particular types of hand movements displayed during talk, called iconic gestures, carry crucial aspects of meaning. These movements are much less under editorial control than speech itself and offer an extraordinary window on the human mind in action.” His recent book, Visible Thought: The New Psychology of Body Language (Routledge 2003), tells this fascinating story. His ground breaking work on the theory has attracted not only TV producers but more
recently advertising moguls have realised its significance. For Professor Beattie has demonstrated that when a complex advertising message is split between speech and gesture, viewers take in considerably more information than from speech alone. His BBC TV programme, Family SOS, takes his analysis into the family setting, applying psychology in a pragmatic, sympathetic and constructive way to help families deal with problems from dysfunctional behaviour to bereavement. There is no doubt Professor Beattie enjoys his media status and, to be honest, the star treatment. He is not afraid to be popular – or populist. But there is no danger of his losing touch with his academic base. And he clearly manages to hold the balance between media acclaim and academic respectability. Being awarded the prestigious Spearman Medal by the
British Psychological Society for “published psychological research of outstanding merit” reflects that. He is also a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and President-elect of the Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Powerful stuff. “It is very important to me that my academic work and my research are first class –and that’s what I enjoy doing,” he says. “The two go together very well, one informing the other.” He also enjoys talking to audiences, whether they number 7.7 million or a more normal lecture hall-full. And Professor Beattie is very much in demand around the world, receiving some unlikely invitations and finding himself in exceptional company. Recently, he was invited to lecture on a cruise out of New York harbour, along with George Martin and “Stormin” Norman Schwarzkopf of Gulf War fame. That sort of celebrity status is all very enjoyable, but he does not allow it to detract from his focus and real enthusiasm for his university role. “This is a very exciting time,” he says. “We are prospering by being part of Medical Sciences, bringing together departments with Grade 5 research ratings into a strong School of Psychological Sciences. We have just carried out the biggest staff recruitment programme in our history – and we have a young age profile.”
The School has five inter-related research groups: Clinical and Health Psychology, Language and Communication, Audiology and Deafness, Clinical Neuroscience and Language Disorders, and Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience. Professor Beattie is Head of the Division of Psychology and leads the Language and Communication Group. “I am rather greedy, I suppose,” he says disarmingly. “But I am deeply committed to our research drive.” He is also very much looking forward to the School having a unified base, coming together in a refurbished Dover Street building in 2007. “When I arrived just over ten years ago, I would not have believed that we would be in the position we are today - and that I would have the privilege of leading all this development,” he says. There is also a reassuring thread of continuity in his work as well as a secure attachment to his roots. He has followed up his immensely readable autobiographical book, We Are the People: Journeys through the Heart of Protestant Ulster (Heinemann 1992), which was runner-up for the Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize, with a sequel – Protestant Boy (Granta 2004). “It’s a much darker book, in a way, and sadder,” he says. “But it also realises another ambition – ever since I was at Cambridge, I always wanted to be published by Granta.”
His debut novel, The Corner Boys (Gollancz 1998, Klett-Cotta, Berlin, 2000), was also runner-up for the Ewart-Biggs Prize. Professor Beattie has also followed up his earlier work on boxing, On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life (Gollancz 1996), hailed as a boxing classic and short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. In order to write that book, he famously took up boxing for a while – and he still has a lot of friends at ringside and in the ring itself, including champion fighter Prince Naseem Hamed, the subject of his sequel: The Shadows of Boxing: Prince Naseem and those he left behind (Orion 2002). Being fond of first-hand experiential research, in writing this book he signed on anonymously with a Salford-based employment scheme. Having turned up at 5 am to do a multiple-choice test about work on a building site he scored 65%. The young man behind the counter pointed out that he got today’s date wrong. “I’m sorry,” he replied. “I get dates mixed up sometimes. I’ve often got a lot on my mind.” He can say that again. It seems appropriate that on his office wall there is a large colourful cartoon of Homer Simpson, with the speech bubble “Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain.” Somehow, I doubt it.
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In October 2004, The University of Manchester became Britain’s first chartered university of the twentyfirst century and the largest higher education institution in the country
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Royal Launch for University The launch was the culmination of two years of planning and hard work to bring together the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST to create a single, distinctive, research-led University in the north of England with the size, reputation and ambition to compete with the best universities in the world. The Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the launch of the new University as “a bold and ambitious move that promises to open up major new opportunities in the fields of research and learning”. Presenting the University with its Royal Charter at a glittering Inauguration Ceremony held in the Whitworth Hall, Her Majesty The Queen said: “In creating this new institution, you are building on a rich academic heritage and a fine tradition of excellence in both teaching and research. By combining the talents of two such highly rated institutions, I feel sure that you will increase the chances of making your position more powerful, not only in the UK, but across the world.
An unprecedented £300 million investment programme will make Manchester an academic giant in terms of facilities, staffing levels and research capacity. The President and Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Alan Gilbert, said the strategy was ambitious: “Our aim is to make The University of Manchester one of the finest universities in the world, occupying a place in the top 25 research-led institutions in the world. This is a one-off opportunity to change the landscape of higher education.” Through a multidisciplinary approach, a growing number of the world’s leading researchers will be based in Manchester seeking out solutions to, for instance, Parkinson’s Disease, world poverty and global warming. Professor Gilbert added that the new University was doubly blessed, he said: “Genuinely new, it is, like all new institutions, free to be innovative, creative and nimble, but it also has inherited a rich legacy of scholarly achievement,
research, performance, educational excellence and community engagement from its distinguished predecessor institutions. This combination of freedom with a great legacy is uniquely empowering.” During the ceremony, Co-Chancellor Anna Ford stressed the importance of opening up learning to a more diverse student body: “We place widening participation in higher education high on our agenda and continue to forge highly productive and mutually beneficial links with young people, with the help of our many partners in the region.” Co-Chancellor Sir Terry Leahy praised the University’s staff for their contribution. He said: “They have worked tirelessly over the past two years to ensure that the dream of the single great institution became a reality. They should be heartily applauded for their determination and the sheer hard work, not only for what they have done already, but for what I know they will continue to do to make the University a world-class institution.”
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The Manchester 2015 Agenda Our Mission – to make The University of Manchester, already an internationally distinguished centre of research, innovation, learning and scholarly inquiry, one of the leading universities in the world by 2015.
The Manchester 2015 Agenda is an ambitious Strategic Plan for reconstituting and repositioning The University of Manchester over the next decade as one of the world’s best universities. Premier international universities are the preferred destinations for the best students, teachers, scholars and researchers in the world. They are exemplary employers, placing great value on supporting, developing and rewarding their staff. They provide students with a superb learning experience, support excellence in teaching and provide researchers with state-ofthe-art research facilities and efficient, effective administrative, financial and technical support. The best international universities are iconic institutions. Their brands are synonymous with excellence; their leading scholars are high profile public intellectuals; they are centres of artistic and aesthetic virtuosity; and for their graduates, their names and reputations open doors to the world’s most prestigious professional workplaces. Such universities are able to invest immense resources in the vital functions they perform, whether because of enlightened public funding, massive endowments, major fee-based or industry-linked revenues, or some combination of these and other income sources. They are key national and international institutions, not only in advancing education, discovery and innovation, but also more broadly in enriching 20 YOUR MANCHESTER
the culture and enhancing the quality of public life in the communities they serve. The University’s Manchester 2015 Agenda outlines the plans to bridge the gap between the institution formed in October 2004, with the unification of the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST, and the institution it has the potential to become by 2015. As an exercise in strategic planning, the Manchester 2015 Agenda begins, not with the status quo, but rather with a ‘preferred future’ visualising Manchester in 2015 as one of the leading 25 universities in the world. The full plan contains not only our corporate goals, but details of the key strategies for achieving this and a comprehensive list of key performance indicators. Implementing the Manchester 2015 Agenda will demand energy, vision, courage and tenacity – and superb planning. The size of the gap to be bridged between the very good institution created by the merger and the virtuosity of the world’s first rank universities, means that success will require not only finelycalculated effectiveness in the pursuit of ambitious goals, but also high levels of organisational and financial efficiency. The University operates through an annual cycle of planning and accountability that will persist, year-in, year-out, at all levels of the University, until the Manchester 2015 vision has become a
reality. The cycle involves inter-locking processes of strategic and operational planning, budgeting, implementation, performance review and accountability to stakeholders. There are cognate planning processes in every Faculty, School and Administrative Directorate and in key functional areas such as Research, Teaching and Learning and Estates which translate the high- level vision, values, objectives, strategies and performance measures of the Agenda into more focused documents of their own. At all such levels, strategic planning generates annual Operational Plans designed to break longer-term goals down into shorter-term targets. The realisation of the Manchester 2015 vision represents an enormous challenge for all members of the University, but it is a challenge that we are approaching with great confidence and enthusiasm.
Professor Alan Gilbert President and Vice-Chancellor
Goals Goal One High International Standing To establish The University of Manchester by 2015 as a world renowned centre of scholarship and research, able to match the leading universities in the world in attracting and retaining teachers, researchers and “critical mass� research teams of the highest quality, and as a higher education brand synonymous with the finest international standards of academic excellence, and with pioneering, influential and exciting research and scholarship. Goal Two World Class Research To establish the University of Manchester by 2015 among the 25 strongest research universities in the world on commonly accepted criteria of research excellence and performance. Goal Three Exemplary Knowledge and Technology Transfer To contribute to economic development regionally, nationally and internationally, and greatly to increase opportunities for the University and its staff and students to benefit from the commercialisation and application of the knowledge, expertise and intellectual property (IP) that they develop in the University.
Goal Four Excellent Teaching and Learning To provide students with teachers, learning environments, teaching and learning infrastructure and support services equal to the best in the world. Goal Five Widening Participation To make the University of Manchester the UK’s most accessible research-intensive university by providing international students from educationally deprived backgrounds and home students from traditionally under-represented sections of society with a supportive learning environment in an inclusive and welcoming university community. Goal Six Empowering Collegiality To maintain The University of Manchester as a collegial community to which staff of the highest calibre are attracted, and within which all staff, whatever their roles or functions, may be proud of their University, are able to identify with its aspirations and are informed, enabled and encouraged to take appropriate responsibility for its direction, development and management.
Goal Seven Efficient, Effective Management To maintain management systems, processes and services at all levels of the University that are open, supportive and empowering, responsive to academic needs, strategically focused and exemplary in meeting all internal and external obligations and responsibilities, and able to provide the University with a competitive advantage in its pursuit of the Manchester 2015 Agenda. Goal Eight Internationally Competitive Resources To ensure that the University acquires the recurrent and capital resources necessary to be competitive at the highest international level. Goal Nine More Effective Community Service To contribute to the social, cultural and economic development of North West England, and in a broader national and international context to the development of a secure, humane, prosperous and sustainable future for human society.
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If you haven’t visited Manchester lately, you might be surprised how much has changed. But it’s not all about bars and designer labels. The Royal Exchange Theatre has dispensed with echoing gloom and gone pastel and neon. And those dreadful lavatorial tiles have gone from the Arndale
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Arndale Centre
Manchester Piccadilly
Traditional with a twist Some things will never change. Manchester’s town hall, a riot of neo-Gothic civic pride, still stands in Albert Square. Hard-up students still ward off starvation in Rusholme’s curry mile. Wilmslow woman still shops at Kendal’s. But much has changed in Manchester (not least two universities becoming one) and different generations will have their own perspectives, depending on how long it was since each was last in the city (whose rainy reputation the University’s new President and Vice-Chancellor urges us to play down). So let’s say you were here in the Madchester era, when New Order grabbed the ears and the Haçienda the imagination of the world.
A pilgrimage to Whitworth Street to revive memories of nights of dance and chemicallyfuelled love would end in disappointment: the Haçienda is no more, demolished in 1997 to make way for 130 apartments as developers tried to keep up with the new passion for citycentre living.
Symphonies are now heard round the corner at the Bridgewater Hall, whose interior is by far the most beautiful of Britain’s new concert venues. If you don’t know where to look, it’s next to Tommy Duck’s, that pub which had knickers stuck to the ceiling of the bar. Except that Tommy Duck’s was demolished years ago.
But perhaps you are older, with fond memories of John Barbirolli leading the Hallé in Elgar when the Free Trade Hall was rebuilt after wartime bomb damage. You make your sentimental pilgrimage down Peter Street and find behind that Victorian-Florentine facade, not a concert hall, but a five-star hotel with public rooms named after Hallé maestros.
If the shock of that loss is too great, then both the Briton’s Protection and Peveril of the Peak, two classic Manchester pubs, remain close at hand for a reviving drink. Or you could venture into one of the hundreds of bars that have graced, and sometime quickly disappeared from, the city’s streets, some of them with outside tables in defiance of that stuff the President says we mustn’t mention.
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Central Library - St Peter’s Square
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Music apart, there were not too many happy Mondays in Manchester in the 70s and 80s as the city shivered through the economic ice age of industrial decline. But things started happening in the early 90s, helped greatly by a large bomb the IRA parked in a white van outside Marks and Spencer in 1996 and by the rush to look good in time for the wonderfully successful Commonwealth Games in 2002. (And there’s another change: Maine Road is no more; Manchester City now play at the saddle-shaped stadium built for the games in east Manchester).
Urbis
The bomb brought a determination to realign the city, to link the well-tramped core to the forgotten medieval quarter by the cathedral. So that hideous concrete square across the road from St Ann’s Square bit the dust and a new pedestrian route was constructed with Selfridges and a new M&S on one side and Heals and Harvey Nichols on the other. To clear the ground, two famous pubs, the Old Wellington and Sinclair’s, went walkabout and were re-erected side by side near the Cathedral. They both hope that is where they will now stay. The old Corn Exchange, with its tarot card readers and medal sellers, suffered badly in the bomb blast. It reopened as the upmarket Triangle shopping centre, just as the old complex across the road where Robert Maxwell’s Daily Mirror was printed became the Printworks, with still more bars and a multiplex cinema with an Imax screen.
Piccadilly Gardens
Printworks
The bomb, much to everyone’s disappointment, missed most of the Arndale Centre. But as a contribution to the new urban excitement, its owners have removed thousands of lavatorial tiles and are extending the building in a less utilitarian fashion. The new Manchester is not all shops and designer labels. The Royal Exchange Theatre, much damaged by that IRA blast, has dispensed with echoing gloom and gone pastel and neon.
Imperial War Museum North
The Lowry
renaissance (although it is actually in Trafford): the Imperial War Museum North, designed by Daniel Libeskind in the form of a globe shattered into aluminium shards.
tranquillity. This is new; but Piccadilly Gardens has been part of the city for ages, although in its pre-revamp days quite a shifty one. It has now been transformed, with a fountain that delights children and a long concrete wall that annoys adults. You can’t please everyone but at least it feels safer.
The City Art Gallery has added an extension to double its size and become the Manchester Art Gallery, more welcoming and less forbidding than it was before. The wonderful PreRaphaelites are still there but so is an interactive gallery, providing fun for children (and adults). Trams passing the door will whisk you to Salford Quays, a mass of office block styles that will amaze anyone who last came when this was a mighty inland port. The ships have gone but culture, in the shape of a glass and steel palace of varieties, has come. The Lowry, the national millennium project for the arts, opened in some chaos in 2000 but its galleries, with changing exhibitions of LS Lowry’s work, and two auditoriums have since blossomed. This is the place, with vibrant orange and purple walls, for opera, dance, drama, comedy and the Lady Boys of Bangkok. Across the Manchester ship canal lies perhaps the greatest building of the Manchester
This could not be more different from Urbis, the cool, sensuous glass ski slope designed by Ian Simpson for Manchester’s new museum of the city, now establishing itself behind the Cathedral after a very shaky start. Between Urbis and Chetham’s School of Music lies Cathedral Gardens, a grassy space with a soothing water feature that has proved popular with sandwich munchers looking for lunchtime
Manchester has changed and keeps changing. But the biggest change of the last 15 years has been a return of confidence. Manchester has come to love itself again, to enjoy and celebrate its differences from London rather than regret them.
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The San Andreas Fault
Courtesy of James Balog/Getty Images
Ground breaking research There has been much talk about early warning systems following last year’s devastating Asian Tsunami which claimed so many lives. But will we ever be able to predict earthquakes with any accuracy? Research in the School of Earth, Environment and Atmospheric Sciences aims to find out
Ernie Rutter of the School’s Rock Deformation Laboratory is taking part in an ambitious California-based project which is the biggest and most expensive earthquake investigation yet devised. “This is very complicated science and the mechanics of what actually goes on during an earthquake is only just beginning to be understood,” he said. “What we are trying to do is unravel the physics and the chemistry of fault zones. But it is early days and at the moment we are still a long way away from reliable earthquake prediction, despite large expenditure by the US and Japan over the last 30 years.” That said, Professor Rutter does expect his research to play a valuable role in infrastructure planning in known earthquake zones by improving the accuracy of statistical earthquake risk assessment. This will help communities decide how much to invest in measures to minimise the impact of any future earthquakes, he said. An Earthquake is a sudden tremor or movement of the Earth's crust, which originates naturally at, or below, the surface. Scientists know that there are two main causes of earthquakes. Firstly, they can be linked to explosive volcanic eruptions and can proceed or accompany eruptions. Secondly, and most commonly, they can be triggered by tectonic activity associated with plate margins and faults.
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Imagine the effect when a stone is thrown into water. After the stone hits the water a series of concentric waves will move outwards from the centre. The same events occur in an earthquake. There is a sudden movement within the Earth’s crust or mantle, and concentric shock waves move out from that point. Geologists call the origin of the earthquake the focus. Since this is often deep below the surface and difficult to map, the location of the earthquake is often referred to as the point on the Earth surface directly above the focus, called the epicentre. But there are still many unanswered questions and Professor Rutter is currently participating in the Californian ‘Safod’ project which aims to understand much more about the notorious San Andreas Fault. Professor Rutter’s expertise lies in being able to measure the strength of a fault based on the pressure of fluids inside the rocks themselves. California sits upon two plates, he explains; the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. The Pacific Plate consists of most of the Pacific Ocean floor and the California Coast line. The North American Plate comprises most of the North American Continent and parts of the Atlantic Ocean floor. The primary boundary between these two plates is the San Andreas Fault which is more than 650 miles long and extends to depths of at least 10 miles. Many
Professor Ernie Rutter
other smaller faults like the Hayward (Northern California) and the San Jacinto (Southern California) branch from, and join, the San Andreas Fault Zone. The Pacific Plate grinds northwestward past the North American Plate at a rate of about two inches per year. Parts of the San Andreas Fault system adapt to this movement by constant "creep" resulting in many tiny shocks and a few moderate earth tremors. But in other areas where creep is not constant, strain can build up for hundreds of years, producing a great earthquake when it is finally released. The Safod experiment involves drilling a series of holes 5km down into the San Andreas fault near a small town called Parkfield – known as the earthquake capital of the world. The aim is to collect samples of rocks from deep inside the fault and analyse them. “Where we come in is measuring how quickly fluids flow through the rocks and what controls the flow of fluid through these rocks,” Professor Rutter said. “The reason that is important is that the pressure of fluids in a fault zone affects how strong a fault zone is, its resistance to sliding and the amount of stress that is required to make it slip and cause an earthquake.” On Boxing Day 2004, the largest earthquake since 1964 (when a magnitude 9.2 earthquake
struck Alaska) occurred as a result of the convergence of the Indian and Asian tectonic plates. The Indian Plate was moving approximately northeast at a rate of around 6 cm per year at an oblique angle to the Java Trench. As the Indian Plate was sub-ducted, a thrust zone was created along the plate boundary. This thrusting motion along the interface between the two plates generated the earthquake. The aftershock zone extended from Northern Sumatra to the Andaman Islands, some 1000 km to the north and the largest aftershock measured 7.1, in the Nicobar Islands. And the devastating tsunami was a direct consequence of the earthquake, which caused movement of the seafloor all along the length of rupture, displacing a huge volume of water and generating the tsunami wave. The vertical uplift could have been as much as several metres. Professor Rutter was presenting his research in April this year at the prestigious European Geosciences Union meeting: “The big question which we are trying to answer is whether there is something fundamentally different about big faults like this which penetrate the Earth’s crust, and the small faults which do not. There is a great deal of controversy around the question but until we have an answer we cannot fully understand how earthquakes work and we will remain a long way from reliable prediction.” No scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake. They do not know how, and they do
not expect to know how in the near future. However based on scientific data, probabilities can be calculated for potential future earthquakes. For example, scientists estimate that over the next 30 years the probability of a major earthquake occurring in the San Francisco Bay area is 67%, and 60% in Southern California. Meanwhile most scientific work in the field focuses on the long-term mitigation of earthquake hazards by helping to improve the safety of structures, rather than by trying to accomplish short-term predictions which are still little more than guess work. The University of Manchester would like to send the following message: Dear Friend We were saddened to learn about staff and students who have lost friends and family in the Asian earthquake disaster. Our thoughts are with you during this difficult time. The University of Manchester is concerned for the welfare of its alumni, and is particularly concerned to hear from any former student who has been directly affected, via the following email address d.prince@manchester.ac.uk Sincere condolences The Alumni & Development Office
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Barry Unsworth
A way with words
Ben Elton
Anthony Burgess
Courtesy of Robin Matthews
Sophie Hannah
What does Little Grey Rabbit have in common with The Clockwork Orange? Both were created by Manchester alumni. The University has produced a distinguished cast of writers over the years and can be justly proud of its novel tradition
The University of Manchester isn’t often recognised as having a literary elite - neither does it exhibit any pretensions towards creating one even though the ‘Manchester Movement’ has a certain alliterative allure. Yet amongst the alumni is a long and distinguished line of novelists. Anthony Burgess, George Gissing, Alison Uttley, Barry Unsworth, Louis de Berniéres, Sophie Hannah and Alex Garland are amongst those who have achieved international status and huge critical acclaim for their writing. Alongside them are Meera Syal, Ben Elton, Mark Radcliffe and Adrian Edmondson who have all added popular fiction to their achievements as entertainers. Perhaps there’s a certain reluctance on behalf of some former students to proclaim themselves as great writers. Certainly, Anthony Burgess had designs on being a composer, rather than a novelist and he definitely wasn’t too overjoyed to be remembered for the cult classic ‘A Clockwork Orange’. But one suspects he would be rather flattered by the new ‘shrine’ that has opened in Withington that will be home to the Anthony Burgess
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Foundation. Director Alan Roughley explains that the Foundation in Tatton Grove has been set up with the backing of Burgess’s widow, Liana Burgess, to encourage and support research into the life and works of her husband. If Burgess himself didn’t envisage himself as a writer of note, many others beg to differ, including Dame Antonia Byatt, Umberto Eco, Harold Bloom and Martin Scorsese, who have all become honorary patrons of the Foundation. Look out too for the big names gearing up for the first Anthony Burgess Symposium which will be held in Manchester this July. “Harold Bloom has said there are some very significant works in the Burgess cannon,” reveals Professor Roughley. “Particularly his Enderby novels, which he believes will stand the test of time.” A rather thrilling addition to the journals, papers and libraries of Burgess is a film script written for A Clockwork Orange before Kubrick transformed it into a controversial movie. Professor Roughley says Burgess took quite an active part in university life during 1937-40. But
in 1993 was amongst the first recruits to the MA course in 1995.
Alison Uttley
“At the time it never really occurred to me that I could do writing properly,” she confesses. “ I always did it as a hobby, so when I finished my degree I had a moment of panic about what I was going to do next, then I found out my creative writing tutor was setting up this course and I thought it sounded good fun - a nice way to spend the year.” Ms Hannah, who was already a published poet before she did the year long course, now has three novels to her credit - but it might not have been if she’d listened to one American student on the course who’d said she should stick to poetry. This led to a huge feud between them for the rest of the year. “Part of what’s good about having a group of writers together is the intrigue and gossip that goes on as well,” she adds. “It’s as important as having them comment on each others’ work.” Suzannah Dunn, a published novelist who is one of the tutors who runs the course reports that the future is looking bright for The University of Manchester’s storytellers. Courtesy of Yevonde Portrait Archive
it wasn’t a very auspicious beginning, according to the author. “I was never a good student,” he writes in his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God. “...a native laziness still revolts against the learning of facts and vocabulary. A J P Taylor lectured to a hundred or so of us and earned my enmity by scoffing at James Joyce’s ‘Work in Progress’. He wrote on the blackboard ambidextrously. On my first term paper, which was awarded a fail mark, he wrote ‘bright ideas insufficient to conceal lack of knowledge’.” His view of fellow female students was uncharitable: “Literature is all, or mostly about sex, but the girls in our seminars were natural disinfectants of it.” Yet it was at Manchester he met his first wife Lynne and embarked on his literary career. He didn’t get a first, but a credible 2:1. Writer Alison Uttley preceded Burgess at Manchester, gaining the distinction of becoming the second - not as is sometimes claimed the first - woman to receive a physics honours degree in 1906. “I was the second girl to take honours physics. I was the first to work at it from the start, but a graduate BSc returned and took the third year of the examination to be the first,” she explained.
She claimed at the end of her life that she didn’t care a button about English while at Manchester, but on another occasion contradicts this with the recollection that “I wasted a lot of time at college, that is, I did many things not connected with my work, dipping into other subjects and joining all the societies that I could.” Sometimes discussions took place at ‘cocoa parties’ in Ashburne Hall where she lived and she contributed to the Ashburne magazine. So Manchester stimulated her artistic nature more than she cares to admit, although she didn’t start writing properly until her husband Arthur James Uttley died in 1930. It was only then and to support her son that she went on to create endearing childhood characters like Sam Pig and Little Grey Rabbit. Not exactly literary salon stuff, but enough for her to be awarded a D Litt by the University in 1970. If Manchester is about to get its own literary mafia, then its largely because of its successful novel writing course, which is 10-years-old this year. Sophie Hannah, who studied for a degree in Combined Studies at the University
Former student Jonathan Trizell had his book ‘Boy A’ well received by the critics when it was published by Serpent’s Tail in 2004 and this year university student Susan Barker struck a six figure deal with Doubleday for her first two novels. “I’ve read the novel and it’s fantastic,” says Ms Dunn. “It’s set in a Japanese bar and is about the girls who work there. It’s a really good read. I was delighted.” Ms Barker, now aged 26, reveals that the book was originally called the ‘Tsunami Lounge’, but after the terrible tragedy in Asia a whole print run was pulped by the publishers. Now re-titled the ‘Sayonara Bar’, it hit the bookshops on March 1, 2005. “I was in Japan teaching English for two years and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, either journalism or creative writing,” she says.“So I just looked on the internet at courses and got into Manchester. It was great, the people there were very supportive - there were only eight of us, so it was a very close knit group.” And of course she was one of the lucky ones, who managed to get published. “As part of the course they brought agents up so you could learn how to present your work to them and I got talking to one in the bar, who said ‘send me your work.’” “I had just finished in Manchester and was leaving after a summer working in a vegetarian café in Fallowfield when I learned that I had got published. It’s very exciting, but every second I am wondering whether it will be something I’ll be able to do for the rest of my life.” So is Susan the new Zadie Smith? Whatever the critics’ verdict will be it looks like The University of Manchester can be justly proud of its novel tradition. YOUR MANCHESTER 29
Village Life Owens Park changed the student landscape in south Manchester forever and sparked a liberal revolution in student housing. Fifty years on the Friday night bop is still unmissable
When plans for Owens Park were first unveiled in the late 1950s, they were seen as groundbreaking stuff. A “student village” in which male and female undergraduates lived together was a pretty revolutionary idea. Oxbridge still had its resolutely single-sex college system and elsewhere students lucky enough to live in the traditional Halls Of Residence (as opposed to grotty digs) were subject to strict rules and regulations. Wardens were there to keep an eye on things and woe betide anyone who broke the rules. Owens Park, or OP, as it later became known, changed the student landscape in south Manchester forever. The scale of the project was awesome. This 14acre site two miles south of the city centre had room for over 1000 students. Housed in different buildings sub-divided into House “units”, each had 40-50 rooms, a common room, utility room and tutor's flat. Bathroom facilities and a kitchen were shared by groups of 10-12 students. A 19-storey tower block dominated the complex, which had all kinds of modern facilities to make life more pleasant for the new student generation. There were several dining rooms, a large assembly hall, library, laundry, sewing room, and of course a bar for serious socialising. Owens Park was a brave experiment in treating young people as grown-ups and there was a mission to fulfil.
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Looking back through the archives, they reveal that “informality and absence of rigidity” was the aim of the University and its architect in designing this community, the first of its kind in England. An official document of the time states: “We asked ourselves what ideals of student and tutor life could we look forward to in this atomic half of the 20th century? Certainly a desire to try for oneself, a willingness to take responsibility and a definitely improved capacity in young people to discharge new responsibilities successfully.” In 1959, when these proposals were first mooted, Britain was just waking up from the harsh austerity of the post-war period - rock and roll had been invented and suddenly the universities were in a position to expand and open their doors to the baby boomers benefiting from increasingly egalitarian attitudes. It was a time of dufflecoats and Aldermaston marches against nuclear weapons. But striped college scarves were still a badge of honour and the heady days of student radicalism a few years away. Owens Park officially opened in 1964 and a second phase of building was completed in 1965. In 1966 it won an award from the Civic Trust. Chemical engineering student Geoffrey Fox, now 60, was one of the first undergraduates to live there. He recalls: “The thing I remember most is rushing into the refectory to bolt down your
Mike Aspden
food so you could go and watch the TV. The Magic Roundabout had a big following, we all loved it!” Mr Fox, who went on to work at Ferrantis in Wythenshawe, now lives in south Derbyshire. He met his wife while resident at Owens Park and confesses: “The Owens Park tower has many happy memories for both of us.” Though much more liberal in many ways than what had gone before, the Owens Park regime was still designed to ensure that its young people were protected. A team of tutors was appointed to look after the students and as the years went by, the Owens Park Students' Association was able to voice its concerns and press for improvements to life on campus. One man who has seen lots of changes is Mike Aspden, now General Manager, who has been there for 23 years. The japes and pranks of Rag Day were an annual highlight when he first arrived as Catering Manager and he remembers live sheep running riot on the 18th floor of the tower block. Another occasion saw a blow-up doll causing havoc, and in more serious vein he recalls a series of political campaigns from antiapartheid to calls for rent rebates. “In many ways, I do miss those times,” he said. “There was a lot of excitement - and a lot of fun. But if my kids were going to university again, this is the sort of place I would want
them to live. We don't actually tuck them up at night but we do look after them.”
of rather sheepish couples were hanging around outside. Pretty scandalous stuff."
As General Manager, Mr Aspden helped provide sustenance for the athletes who stayed in Owens Park during the Commonwealth Games in 2002. Acquiring status as a games village also meant Owens Park acquired a £750,000 security system, which is still paying dividends in curbing crime.
As the 1970s progressed and then the 1980s the “Midnight Rule” still existed - albeit in more liberal guise. In practice, times had changed.
Back in the early 1970s, things were not quite so hi-tech. Ophthalmic optics student Margaret Lyne, who graduated in 1971, recalls: “Things like computers, mobile phones and microwaves may have been unheard of but Owens Park was still pretty groundbreaking. Up till then, halls of residence had been for either men or women and the very idea that you could share the same living space was pretty extraordinary. There were very few of us women, about 250.” “The first year was pretty frenetic and you would be down the Friday night bop every week but once you had made your friends or met your boyfriend then it all settled down. There was a separate room for each of the three TV channels and we would all sit there in great big gangs watching Star Trek. The western series Alias Smith and Jones was another big favourite. “We also had the midnight rule, which means you weren't supposed to have any overnight guests from outside Owens Park. But it didn't quite work like that. I remember once there was a fire scare in the middle of the night and lots
By 1982 the Owens Park Student Association was a force to be reckoned with and the Fallowfield area had become a hotspot of student life. The OP Handbook for 1982 offers long lists of pubs and places to eat, including the legendary “Plaza” with its Suicide Special curries. At the Friday night bop, video screens were now playing footage of pop heroes like Adam Ant and Soft Cell. “Tainted Love” was the most requested record of the day. A new service, Nightchat, offered a counselling service to student insomniacs or those troubled with other worries. Almost 30 years later, Owens Park is still going strong. And so is the Friday night bop. It has huge competition from the many bars and restaurants which have sprung up on Wilmslow Road but the weekly opportunity for students to strut their stuff is still as popular as it was all those years ago. First-year geography student Patrick Hamilton, 20, says: “The Owens Park bop is still the big event of the week. It’s always really crowded and at only £1.30 for a pint of lager or beer it beats sitting in a pub any day of the week. Most of my mates wouldn't go anywhere else.”
YOUR MANCHESTER 31
Alumni Association The University Alumni Association is not just about collecting names and addresses of former students, it is a partnership which we hope you will find useful - and fun. We look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in the near future The word ‘alumni’ is taken from the Latin ‘alum’, loosely translated as ‘former student’. Essentially the Association is an exclusive club and you automatically become a member once you have studied at the University for at least a year. Currently, we have 180,000 members all over the world but we aim to increase this dramatically over the next few years and trace all our members whose addresses have become lost.
Chair of the interim Alumni Advisory Board Andrew Spinoza (BA Hons Combined Studies 1982)
The aim of the Alumni Association is to promote links between the Association’s members and The University of Manchester so that members take an active interest in the life of the University - at local, national and international levels. We offer a benefits package to all our members giving discounts on a variety of products and services (see page 34 for details). We are also in the process of developing the alumni website pages. You are the best ambassador for studying here at Manchester – you can inspire and encourage others to follow in your footsteps. In addition, you are a rich source of feedback helping to shape the future of the University. Our students and younger alumni can also learn from your experience and you can help them with advice and mentoring support. Alumni Association Constitution The new Alumni Association is constituted to work closely with the University. Its Constitution and details of the nomination process for membership of the University’s Board of Governors and General Assembly can be found on the alumni website – www.manchester.ac.uk/alumni - or by contacting the Alumni Relations Office. Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of the Alumni Association will take place at 5.15 pm on Thursday, 3 November 2005, prior to the Cockcroft Rutherford Lecture. Please contact the Alumni Relations Office if you would like to attend.
32 YOUR MANCHESTER
In 1983, Andrew Spinoza founded City Life, a what's on magazine for Greater Manchester, which is now owned by the Guardian Media Group. After six years as publisher and editor, he enjoyed five years as a freelance journalist for the national and Manchester media. In 1993, he was appointed Diary Editor of the Manchester Evening News. In 1998, he founded Spin Media, a national Public Relations consultancy based in Manchester. The agency's first accounts were in leisure and entertainment, including PR for the Alex Ferguson testimonial year. The agency has grown into one of the top five independent agencies based in the North West, and now also specialises in regeneration, property, finance and public sector work. Retained clients include Co-operative Bank, Spirit Group, GWR, The Lowry, Manchester Enterprises and Liverpool Vision, and recent projects include launching Cirque du Soleil, restaurants for Raymond Blanc and Marco Pierre White, and the biography of Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho.
One of our aims is to encourage as many alumni get-togethers as possible and to help put you in touch with old friends
The University Alumni Reception in London April 2005
Ready to be Reunited? Why not take up our offer to share some memories, catch up with news and rekindle friendships? The Alumni Association works hard to bring members together and is setting up an exciting programme of events over the coming months. We can even link you up with alumni who share your particular interests, either social or professional. Our growing range of Special Interest Groups currently comprises Accounting and Finance; Business Networking; Drama and Music; Law; Media; Medical; Optometry; Teaching; Textiles; and Young Graduates. Most groups send out newsletters and run a series of social events throughout the year. We also have a number of established alumni groups overseas especially in Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, Singapore and Hong Kong. If you would like contact details for the overseas groups please talk to our dedicated International Alumni Officer, Jackie Furby: tel +44 (0)161 275 2484 or email jackie.furby@manchester.ac.uk. For special interest groups or other reunion enquiries please contact Alex McAlinden on tel + 44 (0)161 306 3066 or email a.mcalinden@manchester.ac.uk. Chemical Mix The Alumni Relations Office and the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science is organising a major reunion event on Friday 1 and Saturday 2 September 2006. The event will celebrate fifty years of chemical engineering in Jackson’s Mill and will involve a mix of academic and social activities including a
Event Young Alumni
reception, dinner, tours of The Mill and the campus, a lecture on the history of chemical engineering in Manchester and much more. If you are interested in more information please contact Alumni Relations. Social Engineering This year, we are planning one of our largest reunions ever to coincide with our prestigious Cockcroft Rutherford Lecture on 3 November 2005. The lecture will be given by Michael Parker, Chief Executive of BNFL, and will be entitled ‘Nuclear Power: Consigned to History or a Future Source of Sustainable Energy’. Don’t forget we can help you to meet up with graduates who share the same year, degree course, or interests as yourself, or with graduates who are from the same area. Alternatively, you may prefer to bring along your own friends or family. The lecture will commence with a drinks reception and will be followed by a dinner. Further information can be obtained from the Alumni Relations Office. Grammar School Get Together Manchester Grammar School is organising a dinner at the school in May for Old Boys who started their career there in 1950 or before. If you are an alumnus of the school from that era and have not received an invitation, you must be one of the so-called Lost Owls and the school would be delighted to hear from you. Please contact Carole Pemberton at Manchester Grammar School, M13 0XT (email c.m.pemberton@mgs.org).
The University of Manchester Alumni Association Event (Singapore) January 2005
The Victoria Un iversity of Man chester Alumni Weeke nd 2004
YOUR MANCHESTER 33
Cottages 4 You
Urbis
Benefits for Alumni By now you will have all received a letter from the President welcoming you to The University of Manchester Alumni Association along with your membership card. Please keep this safe as production of the card entitles you to the following benefits and services.
EDUCATION Library You are entitled to free membership for the John Rylands Library and the Joule Library – just remember to show your membership card as proof of identity. Postgraduate Courses The University of Manchester Loyalty Bursary scheme is to be extended to all postgraduate programmes for the 2005/06 session. The scheme offers a discount to home and overseas, and full and part time students who are graduates of the Victoria University of Manchester or UMIST. Eligible students are entitled to a reduction of 20% on any portion of the tuition fee that they pay from their own resources. There is no application procedure for the scheme – the 20% discount is made automatically during the registration process. For more information please contact the Student Services Centre on 0161 275 5000 or email ssc@manchester.ac.uk
Cottages 4 You A 10% discount is available to members of the Alumni Association on over 14,000 fabulous properties from castles to cosy cottages in the UK, Ireland and France. For more information telephone 0870 336 2833 and quote MAN10 or visit www.cottages-4-you.co.uk/ManUni
HEALTHCARE Norwich Union The University of Manchester has teamed up with Norwich Union and is able to offer you affordable healthcare at a 15% discount on all individual schemes. To receive further information on individual, family or company Private Medical Insurance please contact Kath Grimshaw, Norwich Union Senior Regional Sales Manager, on: 01254 279686 or 07800 696477 or email grimshk@norwich-union.co.uk. You will need to quote AF4970.
Discounted rates are available to all Manchester graduates in many city centre hotels if they are booked through The University of Manchester Conference Office. Please telephone them directly quoting ‘alumni’ on 0161 306 4068 or email mcc.reg@manchester.ac.uk.
Norwich Union Healthcare Limited. Registered in England Number 2464270. Registered Office Surrey Street Norwich NR1 3NG. This Insurance is underwritten by Norwich Union Insurance Limited. Registered in England Number 99122. Registered Office Surrey Street Norwich NR1 3NG. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Member of the Association of British Insurers. Member of the Financial Ombudsman Service.
JRLUM
Chancellors Hotel
ACCOMMODATION
34 YOUR MANCHESTER
RESTAURANTS Le Mont, Urbis, Cathedral Gardens, Manchester Alumni are entitled to a discount of 10% off their final bill at one of Manchester’s premier restaurants, Le Mont, the Urbis Manchester. The discount is valid from Monday to Friday lunch and from Monday to Wednesday dinner. Please note that it is subject to availability and excludes special dates. Bookings must be made in advance, quoting ‘the Manchester graduate discount’ tel: 0161 605 8282. Market Restaurant, Northern Quarter, Manchester The Market restaurant is offering Manchester alumni a 15% discount off the total bill excluding Saturday nights and special dates. Please make all bookings in advance, quoting ‘the Manchester graduate discount’ tel: 0161 834 3743.
TRAVEL/TRANSPORT Avis Avis is pleased to offer great car rental rates worldwide to The University of Manchester Alumni Association members. For further information or to make a reservation please visit www.avis.co.uk/premierpartners or call 0870 60 60 100 and quote U606753. Terms and conditions apply: please check at time of booking.
The Lowry
Britannia Movers International Market Leaders in UK and International Relocations. Members of the Alumni Association can take advantage of a discounted service offering a £200 discount on relocations and a 10% discount on baggage. For more information please call 0800 068 8504 and quote ‘Alumni’
excludes Saturdays and is subject to availability. For further information please call 0161 833 9833 or visit www.royalexchange.co.uk.
©www.thelowry.com/
Royal Exchange, Manchester
Flypark A 5% discount is available to members on car parking options at 15 UK airports, including Heathrow and Manchester. Please visit www.flypark.co.uk/discount or telephone 0870 733 0545. RAC Members of the Alumni Association can save up to 18% on RAC membership. To join, please call 0800 581 077 and quote GE0301. Existing RAC members can take advantage of the discounts at renewal, by phoning 08705 722 722 and quoting GE0301. Terms and conditions apply – calls may be monitored and recorded.
Contact Theatre Members can take advantage of concessionary priced tickets on production of their Alumni Association membership card. For more information please contact the Box Office on 0161 274 0600 or visit www.contacttheatre.org
LEISURE Jodrell Bank Admit one person free of charge when accompanied by one full paying person. Excludes entrance to the 3D Theatre. For more information please contact the Visitor Centre on 01477 571 339
THEATRES
The London Pass Jump the queues and spend more time exploring! The London Pass is London’s only inclusive sightseeing ticket that also offers fast track, queue jumping entry at key locations, restaurants and shopping offers. To take advantage of a 10% discount, please visit www.londonpass.com and quote the code Aluman04 or call 0870 242 9988 and quote ‘The University of Manchester’.
Royal Exchange, Manchester Members of the Alumni Association can take advantage of a £3 discount off any performance in the Main Theatre. This
Please note that there will be more benefits and services to follow and the more we are growing in numbers the greater our bargaining power!
Jodrell Bank
Contact Theatre
SeaFrance Members are able to take advantage of a 10% discount on all fares. Please telephone 08705 711 711 and quote 113016UNI
Chessington World of Adventures Save 15% off admission plus one child goes free with every paying adult. To book call 0870 400 3070 and quote ‘The University of Manchester’. Tickets must be booked at least 5 working days before the date of your visit. www.chessington.com Interflora Interflora are pleased to offer members of the Alumni Association a 10% discount on flowers and finishing touches when ordering online at www.interflora.co.uk using voucher code busact0310. This offer excludes funeral items, overseas delivery and Interflora delivery. For more information please call 0870 904 5459 Madame Tussauds London Save 20% off admission. To book call 0870 400 3001 and quote ‘The University of Manchester’. Tickets must be booked at least 5 working days before the date of your visit. www.madametussauds.com Thorpe Park Save 20% off admission. To book call 0870 400 3060 and quote ‘The University of Manchester’. Tickets must be booked at least 5 working days before the date of your visit. www.thorpepark.com Warwick Castle Save 20% off admission. To book call 0870 442 2385 and quote ‘The University of Manchester’. Tickets must be booked at least 5 working days before the date of your visit. www.warwickcastle.co.uk
Warwick Castle ©www.warwick-castle.co.uk
BSM Members can take advantage of some great savings and benefits, including a free one hour driving lesson. For more information please call 08457 276 276 and quote ESO500. Calls may be monitored and recorded.
The Lowry, Salford Quays The prestigious Lowry, in Salford Quays, will offer certain concessionary prices to Manchester graduates. For more details please telephone: 0161 876 2000. Also, please note that the Lowry is always looking for casual bar staff if you need some part time work!
Alton Towers Save 20% off admission. To book call 0870 400 3095 and quote ‘The University of Manchester’. Tickets must be booked at least 5 working days before the date of your visit. www.altontowers.com
YOUR MANCHESTER 35
Both the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST have a long history of links with Singapore. Amongst the distinguished alumni are a Rear Admiral, a Defence Minister and a Brigadier General. Thousands of other Singaporeans have enjoyed their studies in Manchester including, right, Neil Humphreys and Tay Loy Kee who share some fond memories
A degree of celebration Singapore is a sophisticated and discerning country whose high quality education system has developed along British lines. The English language is spoken widely and today, despite fierce competition from around the world, a significant proportion of Singaporean undergraduates still consider the UK their first
choice for degree level study. Unsurprisingly The University of Manchester brand is well known and respected. Currently The University of Manchester is in contact with almost 2,000 Singaporean graduates of whom it is extremely proud. Amongst them are: Rear Admiral Teo Chee
Hean (Minister of Defence), Mr Hang Cheong Tan (formerly Deputy Director Ministry of Education) Brigadier General Boey Tak Hap, Dr Chia Teck Khiam Christopher (Chief Executive, National Library Board), Mr Mueen Ud Deen (Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase & Co) as well as many senior academics. Both the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST have a long history of links with Singapore and for a number of years now have been holding alumni events in Singapore. This year is no exception and 2005 was successfully kicked off with an annual dinner in January on the 69th Floor of the Raffles Convention Centre. Professor Alan Gilbert, President and ViceChancellor of The University of Manchester, attended with more than 160 alumni who were generous in their support for the Tsunami appeal. In addition a degree ceremony has been held in Singapore for the last four years for Manchester’s BSc Management taught programme degree. This year the ceremony – also presided over by Professor Gilbert - included graduands from the distance MBS programme too. For more information about the Singapore Alumni Association please visit: www.uomalumni.com
36 YOUR MANCHESTER
“A first class degree from Manchester really does open doors for you”
Tay Loy Kee
Neil Humphreys, BA Hons History 1996, is a bestselling author in his adopted home of Singapore. A full-time journalist on the island’s Today newspaper, he has written two books: ‘Notes from an Even Smaller Island’ and ‘Scribbles from the Same Island’, which poke gentle fun at the idiosyncrasies of Singapore life. What did you do after graduation? Well, I was rather tired of being poor so I took a temporary job at stockbrokers BZW, who paid me a rather obscene amount of money to move one set of figures from one column to another (a first class degree from Manchester really does open doors for you). The job was about as exciting as root canal surgery, but I earned enough money to bid Dagenham, my hometown, a fond farewell and moved to Singapore, a country I knew nothing about. Kept my head down, worked hard and ended up using those analytical skills honed in Manchester’s Department of History to write two best-sellers and work for a national newspaper. What advice would you give to alumni wanting to follow your career path and get a book published? If you want to get a book published, write something original. If you can’t do that, imitate someone who was original somewhere else. I thought Bill Bryson’s ‘Notes From A Small Island’ was marvellous. What are your views on the Singapore Alumni Association - how can it benefit alumni? I think it’s a great idea and I’ve just convinced my old Grosvenor Place mate, David Chan, ( a UMIST graduate and the Singaporean who changed my life by inviting me over to his country in the first place), to also get involved. I attended a recent Alumni dinner and I was genuinely surprised by the number of prominent business people, media figures, civil servants and so on in Singapore who are Manchester graduates. What are your lasting memories of Manchester? Playing cricket in the corridor of Grosvenor Place; eating chips for 50p in the refectory; spending many, many hours in the John Rylands Library (I’ve carved my name onto several desks in obscure places - just kidding); the odd trip to Manchester City when West Ham came to town; being drunk a lot.
“Don’t just study, enjoy yourselves too!” Tay Loy Kee, BEng Mechanical Engineering 1994, is President of the Alumni Association in Singapore which was formed last year to continue the work of the highly active Singapore Students Society which has been bringing Singaporeans in Manchester together since 1977. He is a senior first officer for Singapore Airlines. What did you do after graduation? I worked as an engineer first before moving to Singapore Airlines but the interest in flying has always been there for me. The minimum requirement age for Singapore Airlines is 26 so I had to wait some time after graduating before I could apply. Is there any advice you would give to graduates wanting to do something similar? Although you don’t need a degree for my job, I’d say that it has been a real help to my career. The experience of living and studying in an overseas country has also been invaluable. To be successful in aviation you need to have passion. There is much responsibility and the training process is long – but if you have enough desire to fly, then it makes it all worthwhile. What made you join the Singapore Alumni Association Committee? My initial plan was to involve other people and not actually be the President myself. My job as a pilot has also come in extremely handy as it means I can keep popping back to Manchester! The Committee is there to steer the Singapore Alumni Association and this group is a brilliant way for Singapore graduates to link up with Manchester. There are lots of advantages to joining the Singapore Alumni Association – it offers networking, a little nostalgia and the opportunity to socialise. It can also help alumni with their career, especially if they are pro-active. What are your lasting memories of Manchester? Cold walks to classes – Moberly Hall seemed a long walk away from UMIST! Finally do you have any advice for Singapore students studying at Manchester? Don’t just study, enjoy yourselves too!
Neil Humphreys YOUR MANCHESTER 37
New Director Launches Facel Chris Cox has just joined us from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne as Director of the Development and Alumni Relations Office. And he wants to hear from you as Manchester develops plans to become one of the world's most sought after universities
Could you tell us something about your background and where you studied? I was born in the south, but my parents moved to the north-west and then the north-east when I was young. I studied History at University College London (UCL) in the late 1980s. I was the Alumni Officer at UCL for five years before moving to Newcastle in 1996, where I have worked over the last nine years developing alumni relations, the annual alumni fund and major gift programmes. What made you decide to work in Development/Alumni Relations? It was a very young and evolving area of work fifteen years ago in the UK, so it was a chance to be involved in something from the start. The opportunity to work in a people-centred environment in support of the benefits of higher education was very attractive, and remains so. I’ve had the chance to meet and work with some extraordinary people and have never regretted it. How do you feel about moving to Manchester? In discussing this post the President, Professor Alan Gilbert, advised me that I would need to decide whether I was daunted or excited by the scale of the University and the task in hand. A
38 YOUR MANCHESTER
week or so in it can still seem daunting at three in the morning, but I’ve always been impressed by the calibre of academics, support staff and alumni of Manchester and UMIST when I’ve met them informally, so I’m relishing what will be a challenging and exciting opportunity . What are your aspirations for the new job? People tend to think ‘this is all just about money’. They’re right to the extent that we can’t build a genuinely great international university for Manchester by relying on state funding, so philanthropy at all levels will always be important where we can identify projects and priorities that motivate donors. Giving is an important means to an end, but if we focus too narrowly on the financial side we’ll only scratch the surface of what could be achieved. There is now a real opportunity to engage alumni and other friends in promoting and positioning the combined university as an agent for change in addressing issues in wider society that are important to all of us. It’s not a standing start as both previous institutions have benefited from strong alumni and fundraising programmes in different ways.
What are your hobbies and interests? Classical music, sport (football and golf), cooking and acting like a one-year-old to try to entertain our two-year old Ella (our second baby is due in June). We understand that it is through a Manchester alumna that you met your wife. Yes. I met Katie in Newcastle in 1996 for the first time. We were both brought up in the north-east at schools down the road from each other, both studied history at different London colleges (sitting several final exams in the same hall at the same time), and both spent six further years in London before heading to Newcastle independently within a year of each other, still not having met. We were clearly destined to avoid each other, so were reliant on a mutual friend (the Manchester graduate you mention – thanks, Sarah!) holding a dinner party. Do you have any special message for alumni? Only that I look forward to meeting as many of them as possible in the near future and to sharing ideas as to how we can build effective programmes together to support this extraordinary and potentially exceptional new institution.
lift for Fundraising Campaign The University has some ambitious plans to enhance its position as one of the world’s leading and most sought after institutions (see page 20). Involving and engaging alumni in those plans will be critical if the University is to realise its potential Several thousand alumni have provided enormously important support for students and University facilities in recent years - partly through the two Alumni Fund programmes for which the University remains deeply grateful. The success of the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST’s Annual Fund is testament to the generosity of former students. Our alumni, professional community, colleagues, parents and friends have demonstrated their determination to give this university sufficient resources to make a significant difference. Over the years, more than 6500 donors have responded to causes we have championed, donating more than £2.4 million. It is a tribute to the depth and warmth of feeling towards Manchester. In total 60 themed projects, departments and societies have benefited from your generosity. Core areas of support are; the library, computer facilities, special needs and hardship funds. However, special projects such as Aluminate and Manchester Gold, organised by the Careers Service, have also captured the attention of many donors. Our sports programmes have reaped
MANMUN
many benefits including a further grant of £5000 which was awarded this year to enable a new Campus Sport Rugby Union League to be established. Extra curricular activities are an important part of the university experience and so grants are made to individual clubs and societies, as well as to individuals hoping to travel for educational purposes. This year the Annual Fund chose to support an innovative and ambitious student organised project known as MANMUN (Manchester Model United Nations). A team of student organisers took it upon themselves to hold the first ever simulated United Nations conference in the North West. The aim was simple – to create an interest in world affairs. The conference involved four days of heavy debating, along with social interaction, and was also attended by representatives from overseas institutions. Another extremely fulfiling area this year has been the Local Students Awards. The awards were set up in May 2000 to offer £1,000 to the most
deserving students from the Greater Manchester area to help them with their first year of study. The successful students were selected using recommendations from head teachers. Nominations were sought on the basis of academic achievements and personal character within difficult study conditions or family circumstances. This year Professor Alan North, Vice-President and Dean (Faculty of Life Science), presented the awards to Hosea Esdaille and Lubna Aslam, both optometry students. Hosea is the first in his immediate family to go to university and has been determined not to allow financial difficulties to affect this ambition. Similarly, Lubna has shown unswerving commitment to her studies, despite financial constraints and time spent caring for her younger siblings on a daily basis. Your Views and Comments Changes in student finance from 2006, and the need to address major regional, national and international issues, means that support will become still more important over the coming years. The Development and Alumni Relations team are planning a major re-launch of the Alumni Fund programme for the Autumn of 2005, alongside wider fundraising programmes across the University. Feedback and ideas from previous, current and potential future donors will be critical in arriving at a programme that brings maximum benefit to the University, its students and the communities it serves, while also meeting the interests and priorities of donors. If you would like to pass on your suggestions, or to take part in a planned series of face-toface and on-line discussions, please also let us know by emailing alumni-fundraising@manchester.ac.uk. Alternatively, please contact the Director of Development by emailing chris.cox@manchester.ac.uk or telephoning +44 (0) 161 306 2620
YOUR MANCHESTER 39
Musical Gift Rewards Outstanding Talent Victor Sayer left a bequest in his recent will to support postgraduate scholarships for students studying music, to be known as the Victor Sayer Awards. Mr Sayer has expressed a wish to see the awards set up in his lifetime and has been able to provide sufficient funding for a modest version of the awards to be implemented in the coming academic year. Born in Blackpool, Mr Sayer moved to Levenshulme at the age of nine and attended Burnage Grammar School before training as a teacher at Didsbury Training College which was affiliated to the University. Whilst most of his friends were students at the University, Mr Sayer remembers being disappointed when he was turned away from the Student’s Union as studying at the Training College did not qualify him for membership. He taught Science at the Technical High School in Ardwick, which later became Nicholls High School, but it was through his life-long friend Cosmo Rodewald that he became involved with the University. Mr Rodewald was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and they both shared a common interest in music. They attended many concerts and performances at the University, particularly enjoying the Lindsay Concert Series. Mr Sayer says he feels fortunate that he lives in a city with such a rich musical culture: “Manchester has much to offer the music lover, with the University and the Royal Northern College of Music to the BBC and the Bridgewater Hall all being in close proximity and that is why Manchester remains my home.”
When Mr Rodewald passed away in 2002 he left a generous bequest to the University to support the refurbishment of the Coupland 2 Building with new facilities for music and drama. The Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall is named in his honour. “I was inspired by Cosmo’s gift to the University and when I was discussing my own will with my solicitor I decided to do something similar,” Mr Sayer said, “ I was getting a bit stuck and my solicitor suggested a grand gesture (his words!) and that’s how the idea for the Awards was born.” After discussing various options with the Development and Alumni Relations Office, and with John Casken in the Music Department, he decided to establish a bequest to support the ‘Victor Sayer Awards’ for postgraduate music students. The awards will be used to enhance the students’ study and development, and will also bring added benefit to the department through seminars and performances. Mr Sayer’s generosity will provide exciting opportunities for future music students and help to ensure that Manchester continues to be the home of outstanding musical talent.
Remembering Manchester through a Legacy By leaving a legacy to the university, no matter how large or small, you will be investing in future learning. The University has ambitious development plans in almost every academic area and your contribution can make a real difference. We would encourage you to consider an ‘unrestricted’ gift to the University or to specify a broad subject area as this will provide the flexibility needed to ensure that your support brings maximum benefit long into the future. Or, if you have something specific in mind, we would be delighted to work with you to develop a mutual proposal in a way that will safeguard your intentions for the long term. If you have already committed to help the Victoria University of Manchester or UMIST in your will, please be assured that this legacy will still be valid and The University of Manchester will receive, in due course, your valued gift. If you would like to speak to someone about leaving a legacy to the University, please contact Louise Hancock on Tel: +44 (0) 161 265 7230 or by writing to the Development and Alumni Relations Office. All enquiries will, of course, be handled in complete confidence.
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North American Foundation supporting scholarships The North American Foundation for the University of Manchester (or NAFUM for short) is an association for all Manchester alumni living in North America. It is a registered US charity and, through the generosity of our North American alumni, supports a number of postgraduate scholarships for North American students studying in Manchester, including a Manchester-Fulbright Scholarship. Directing this scholarship programme is NAFUM’s Board of Trustees, the majority of whom are fellow Manchester alumni who now live in the US or Canada. They meet twice yearly to review fundraising activities, approve philanthropic support for the University and encourage alumni events and reunions. For further information please contact Lesley Jones telephone +44 (0) 161 275 2373 or email lesley.jones@manchester.ac.uk
Paying the University a Debt of Gratitude Doug Hampson graduated in Economics in 1967 and has since built a successful business empire on both sides of the Altantic. He has shown tremendous generosity of spirit by putting something back into the life of the University today
What made you chose to study Economics and why at Manchester in particular? The decisions we make when we are 17 are not always the most logical and informed. However, economics was the A Level subject that interested me most because it seemed science-like but greatly influenced by the imponderables of human behaviour. Manchester had a good economics department, and, more importantly, they offered me a place. What did you do after graduation to get you where you are today? There was a family background in engineering and manufacturing and I finished up taking a job with Ford, working there for five years before taking two years out to attend business school. I wanted to study in the US because of the excellent reputation of their business schools and I was accepted at Harvard. Whilst in the US, I met my future wife, who lived in California, and after graduation I worked in Switzerland and Paris before being transferred back to the UK where I got married. I had seen the self storage business in California and realised that no-one had yet introduced the idea to the UK. I encouraged my wife to open Europe’s first, in London, whilst I ensured that the bills got paid by keeping my corporate job and working evenings and weekends in the fledgling business.
We then built up a chain of storage centres and are now are semi-retired, based largely in California, but still active in the UK market. What advice would you give to fellow alumni who want to follow in your footsteps? There are endless opportunities for innovative new businesses. The US, particularly California, is a ready source of such ideas, and my advice to anyone seeking to be an entrepreneur would be go to California for three months, look at all the new businesses and find one that you feel would work in the UK. Why do you donate to the University? I give to the University because I feel I owe it a debt of gratitude and because I am proud to be associated with it. I want to help Manchester succeed in its objective of becoming a world class institution. What are your lasting memories of Manchester? My memories are a little hazy after all these years (coming up for forty). I remember excellent economics teaching in the early days of econometrics, but all of these memories are a little overshadowed by recollections of good times at the Students Union.
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Enriching the Social The University's new Business, Careers and Community Division will be reaching out beyond the campus to raise aspirations in an innovative new direction An important part of the mission of the new University is a commitment to enrich the cultural, economic and social wealth of the city and region by promoting learning and raising educational aspirations in our community. The new Business, Careers and Community Division (BCCD) aims to develop partnerships between the University, businesses and the wider community, as well as continuing to promote the employability of students and graduates. A range of community based initiatives are currently underway, for example the University has donated 180 digital cameras, recorders and web cams to primary schools in disadvantaged areas, representing the 180 years since the University was first founded in 1824. The aim of the project, called Primary Vision, was to support teaching and learning using technology and to establish stronger links with schools and communities in deprived areas. The BCCD has also worked in partnership with Manchester Local Education Authority to sponsor the My Manchester‚ initiative. This citywide project challenges the pupils of Manchester to investigate and find out about their Manchester - its history, geography and environment. We would like to invite alumni to join in the project and share their memories of Manchester and their time studying at the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST. We hope many of you will be able to spare a little time to jot down a few thoughts to share with current staff and students, and with the children and members of the local community. As part of our new engagement with the community we are also re-establishing our links with The University of Manchester Settlement and we would really appreciate input into the project from anyone with memories of the Settlement. For more information please visit www.manchester.ac.uk/community/ mymanchester 42 YOUR MANCHESTER
In addition we are developing a strategy to fund a University Discovery Bus‚ to help schools and communities visit the University and other cultural venues. We hope that alumni will be keen to support this initiative by sponsoring seats on the bus which will then bear a plaque with their name, or perhaps by suggesting names of corporate sponsors who may wish to get involved.
Another major project, due to be launched in 2006, is The Children’s University of Manchester, an interactive website for children aged 7-11 years and their teachers and parents. The website will connect the University’s research and teaching to the Key Stage 2 curriculum. If you are interested in receiving regular updates on our community work, please contact jane.ratchford@manchester.ac.uk.
l Wealth of the City Business links In addition to community work the BCCD works closely with the four Faculties of the University to help develop strategic relationships with business and external agencies. Recently, the division’s Regional Business Team was involved in helping persuade the Bank of New York to establish an office in Manchester. Key to their decision in chosing Manchester above other possible global locations, was the high quality of graduates at the University as well as the professional recruitment and business support services offered by the BCCD. The opening of the Bank of New York’s Manchester office will create 1,000 new jobs including 350 graduate positions. The BCCD also has a team of Business Development Managers who work with Faculties to develop strategic collaborations with large multinational companies. We have produced a number of key publications showcasing the University’s relevance to business called Innovation in Action. Whilst the emphasis is on promoting research excellence, the publication also highlights other parts of the University’s potential in continuing professional development, graduate recruitment and community engagement. Innovation in Action is available for download from the Business website at: www.manchester.ac.uk/innovationinaction For more information about our work with business, please contact anne.milligan@manchester.ac.uk.
“I used the Careers Service when I graduated from my Masters in 2000. Now as a recruiter for a leading motor-hire organisation, I find the support and enthusiasm of the Careers Service indispensable to my role. I use the mentoring scheme, Manchester Gold, to put our organisation in touch with bright students, and the student business projects have delivered some really effective results for us.” Abul Shama, Enterprise Rent-a-Car.
Careers support Naturally the University is still committed to continuing a long and fruitful relationship with its former students. Through the BCCD it aims to provide on-going careers advice and support to alumni themselves while allowing alumni to help current students as well. For example, its flagship Aluminate programme enables alumni to get involved with current students through a wide range of activities. There are opportunities to contribute ‘A Day in the Life of’‚ career profiles for the Careers Service website, or to provide student mentoring activities through the Manchester Gold programme. Since its launch in 2004, more than 2,500 graduates have registered on the Aluminate website, over 200 of whom are available to be contacted on the Aluminate Network by other graduates. For those graduates who have yet to register it’s not too late. Whether you have recently graduated, are thinking of a career change, want to market yourself more effectively or just want to make contact with fellow alumni working in similar career sectors, log on to the website today. Registering is free and simple and you can opt to receive the latest job vacancies and careers news. Visit the Aluminate website at: www.aluminate.org.uk In 2005, the BCCD is offering a range of events and services for alumni seeking to develop their careers, find new career directions or simply interact with fellow graduates. The Graduate Recruitment Fair, held in June at GMEX, provides opportunities for graduates, both new and old, to speak to graduate recruiters directly. With more than 160 recruiters and organisations attending, it’s a great opportunity to check the current job market as well as pick up information and advice on improving your job search. More information on the Graduate Recruitment Fair is available at: www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/events/fairs/graduate In November 2005, BCCD are hosting a collaborative event with the British Council and UK Trade & Investment. The event will bring together the University’s brightest international graduates with businesses in the North West. If you are an employer, or run your own business and are looking to expand internationally, you could benefit from the key contacts and local insights of our graduates. The University has a large cohort of high-calibre students from all over the world and many come with their own business experience and networks. Supporting the career development of our international students is important, and during this summer the BCCD is organising a series of discussion forums to enable international alumni and current overseas students to get in touch with each other. BCCD is looking for people to share their experiences and stories with students through online support and our website. For more information please contact terry.dray@manchester.ac.uk
Useful Links for Further Information: Business www.manchester.ac.uk/business Aluminate www.aluminate.org.uk Careers www.manchester.ac.uk/careers Graduate Fair www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/events/fairs/graduate/ Community www.manchester.ac.uk/community Innovation in Action www.manchester.ac.uk/innovationinaction
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