Vice-Chancellor's New Year message

Welcome back at the start of 2016, a year which I’m sure will be one with much to celebrate. We start 2016 in an enviable position and with much to build on from 2015, in a year that could see great changes to higher education in this country.

Last year we launched a new campaign to raise funds for the Colleges and the University. Already, we have raised nearly £600 million of the ambitious £2 billion total, which is a truly remarkable achievement, as well as a record year for the Colleges. This collaborative effort between academics, the Development and Alumni Relations team and Colleges is a fine testament to our collective impact on growing philanthropic giving to Cambridge. My sincere thanks and congratulations to all of you across Collegiate Cambridge who contributed to this success.

Philanthropy, as I said in my first speech of the academic year, is critical if we are to be free to follow our intellectual curiosity, to inspire generations of students, researchers and academics, and to remain at the forefront of global research institutions. Our challenge now is to build on this success.

There has certainly been a great deal to celebrate in the past 12 months. In November’s Spending Review, Chancellor George Osborne announced a £75 million investment in the Cavendish Laboratory, recognising our role in driving innovation vital to UK growth and society. This funding will support our researchers as they create new smart materials for engineering applications, look for signs of life on newly discovered planets, and attempt to understand the origin and fate of the universe.

In partnership with our international peers, we continue to tackle some of the biggest problems facing humanity today. In October we announced the formation of a research alliance with the University of California, Berkeley and the National University of Singapore. In India, we continue to develop sustainable and mutually beneficial collaborations and partnerships. Our growing links with Africa will be supported by additional funding that will enable us to promote excellent research across the continent.

Opportunities for postgraduates

Closer to home, the University of Cambridge Primary School opened its doors to its first intake of 120 pupils last September, as part of the phased opening of the North-West Cambridge development. The school is the first to combine a purpose-built research facility with a teacher-training programme for Cambridge Faculty of Education students.

Opportunities for postgraduates were also expanded with the introduction of a new postgraduate fellowship, the Vice-Chancellor’s Award, last year. The first 71 recipients, drawn from the European Union’s top scoring doctoral students, will join our postgraduate body in driving forward knowledge, innovation and solutions that rise to the global challenges facing us. Better still, together with the Cambridge International Scholarship, the awards mean we can now be confident that the top 250 doctoral candidates applying to Cambridge, irrespective of nationality, will be offered full funding soon after they are offered a place here.

With our strong local, national and international partnerships, we are in an excellent position for 2016. But challenges remain. The proposed reforms outlined in the recent Green Paper and Sir Paul Nurse’s review of the UK Research Councils, could bring significant changes to higher education in the years to come.

We will continue to engage with the government on changes that affect the sector. We are all united on the importance being placed upon teaching, and are well placed to reflect the strength of this and our support to students across Collegiate Cambridge. We remain, as ever, focused on the delivery of world-class teaching and on expanding the excellence and diversity of our research across disciplines. We believe that the integration of teaching and research must be maintained if students are to benefit from exposure to the constantly expanding boundaries of knowledge. We have much to look forward to this year.

Important partnerships

In 2016, we will celebrate the opening of the Milner Therapeutics Institute within the new Capella building at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. This institute is just one example of the strategically important partnerships we are building with the pharmaceutical industry, in particular AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, that have helped make this campus the centrepiece of the largest biotech cluster outside the US.

We will see the opening of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative hub and the redesigned Museum of Zoology, both in the David Attenborough Building on the New Museums Site. The initiative is a collaboration between our Department of Zoology, the Cambridge-based cluster of leading conservation organisations, and the museum.

The opening of the Maxwell Centre on the West Cambridge site will provide laboratory and meeting spaces for more than 230 people. We will open the James Dyson Building, housing some of the world’s most advanced engineering laboratories.

We also mark a number of important anniversaries this year including the celebration of 600 years of Cambridge University Library with a spectacular exhibition of priceless treasures, investigating how both Cambridge and its collections have changed the world and will continue to do so in the digital era. We will also celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Fitzwilliam Museum and the 250th anniversary of Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Finally, after last year’s successful creation of the Sports Committee, and the inspirational victory of our women’s rugby team in the Varsity Match, I look forward to a year when we not only excel in our academic endeavours, but also in our cultural and sporting pursuits.

All these successes and the many more I could have mentioned are a tribute to your hard work and support over the last year. Thank you for everything you do to ensure our continuing success, and I wish you a rewarding 2016.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz
Vice-Chancellor