Tuesday, 13 December 2005. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House. Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor A. C. Minson was presiding, with the Senior Proctor and the Junior Proctor, the Registrary, and eleven other persons present.
The following Reports were discussed:
Report of the General Board, dated 9 November 2005, on the establishment of a Sigrid Rausing Professorship of Collaborative Anthropology (p. 142).
No comments were made on this Report.
Report of the General Board, dated 9 November 2005, on the establishment of a Faculty of Computer Science and Technology (p. 143).
No comments were made on this Report.
First-stage Report of the Council, dated 21 November 2005, on the construction of a new building for a Centre for the Physics of Medicine in the Department of Physics at West Cambridge (p. 176).
Professor A. M. DONALD:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, as Deputy Head of the Cavendish Laboratory and as one of the academic staff with much to gain from this development, I warmly welcome this Report on the construction of a new building for a Centre for the Physics of Medicine in the Department of Physics at West Cambridge.
The building proposed in this Report forms part of a much larger strategy to develop the work and fabric of the Cavendish Laboratory. Working in collaboration with teams from the Departments of Biochemistry, of Chemistry, and of Chemical Engineering and with the School of Clinical Medicine, the intention is to realize a Centre in which the strengths of all their disciplines can be brought to bear on some of the vital problems in the Physics of Medicine. Research in this area is at a crucial stage, where the insights of the physical and biological sciences, working in combination, can provide the impetus for significant progress. This vision has the enthusiastic support of all the Schools involved in this collaborative venture.
The Centre will be directed by the Herchel Smith Professor of the Physics of Medicine, whose leadership will be enhanced by the co-location of all the resources on a single site, rather than being dispersed across different sites as at present. The programme will draw on experimental skills in soft condensed matter, nuclear magnetic resonance, systems biology, and medicine, alongside dedicated theoretical and computational activity.
This building will also form the first phase of the complete re-building of the Cavendish Laboratory to provide a much improved environment for Physics research to meet current and future demands and expectations.
Professor M. S. LONGAIR (read by Professor A. M. DONALD):
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am delighted that we have been able to make such rapid progress on bringing about a development which a number of us have been working towards for a number of years. The Clinical School and the Physics Department have been developing joint plans over the last four years to make a major impact in the key area of the Physics of Medicine. What has been particularly gratifying over this period has been the way in which outstanding scientists spanning the whole range from the purest of theoretical physics to the most practical of clinical medicine have put their weight behind this proposal and given it their warmest support. Some measure of the commitment of the Departments to the initiative is the establishment of two Chairs in the area of the Physics of Medicine and the commitment of the Department of Physics to appoint at least two Lecturers to these areas in the immediate future.
We have also been delighted by the positive response of other Schools and Departments to these initiatives. Cambridge is in the fortunate position of being able to bring to these areas a vast wealth of scientific talent that will undoubtedly result in advances from the purest analyses of complex systems and large molecular interactions to practical advances in medical diagnosis and treatment. Our vision is to bring to bear cutting-edge physics to the analysis of medical problems for the benefit of society at large.
The proposed new building is designed in such a way as to encourage intellectual interactions between scientists from very different disciplines to form a genuinely multi- and inter-disciplinary centre. Cambridge is in a unique position to make this work. I am delighted to be able to record the very positive support we have received from the University and all those involved in the project. I ask the University to endorse the remarkable efforts of academics from such widely different backgrounds.