Notices by the General Board

Establishment of a Professorship (Grade 11) of Synthetic Biology/Engineering Biology

The General Board, on the recommendation of the Faculty Board of Biology and the Council of the School of the Biological Sciences, has approved the establishment of a Professorship (Grade 11) of Synthetic Biology/Engineering Biology for a single tenure from 1 March 2025, assigned to the Department of Biochemistry. The General Board has agreed that the Faculty Board of Biology will determine the title of the office, to reflect the specialism of the person appointed. The Professorship will be funded from within the School’s recurrent Chest allocation utilising savings from recent academic retirements. The Chair of the Resource Management Committee approved the funding arrangements for the office under delegated authority on 23 January 2025.

The office aligns with the School’s research strategy to foster innovative research across disciplinary boundaries. In line with the School’s Academic Vision, Research Themes have been established across six areas of collective academic expertise, with the aim of enhancing strategic agility, competitiveness and the multidisciplinary nature of research in the School and beyond. An important part of the strategic research vision is to use the Theme structures to facilitate collaboration between Heads of Departments to identify priority Theme-based scientific areas for development and investment, so that recruitment to teaching offices can be undertaken more strategically across the School.

The focus of the Professor of Synthetic Biology/Engineering Biology will be to build a world-leading research programme, deliver excellent teaching and engage positively with academic leadership both in the home Department and across the School of the Biological Sciences, forming synergies with cognate disciplines in other Schools and forging the possibility of uniting efforts to bring together engineering, biochemistry, physics, biomedicine and genomics, as well as the concept of open-source biology with global outreach.

The Professor (Grade 11) of Synthetic Biology/Engineering Biology will have an excellent track record, with a particular interest that builds strategic strength and aligns with multiple Research Themes. Those Themes include:

•Organisms, Evolution and Planetary Resilience: integrating mathematics and engineering with biology to address topics like microbiome and organism-to-organism networks with the planet;

•Functional and Evolutionary Genetics: addressing genomic challenges and capitalising on synthetic biology tools for engineering genomes; and

•Reproduction, Development and Lifelong Health: an area ripe for realising impact in genomic engineering and tissue engineering.

Academic responsibilities associated with this role include delivering undergraduate and postgraduate lectures, practical classes and small-group supervisions, engaging with the Research Theme initiatives, and positively contributing to the inclusive and collaborative ethos of the School. Mentoring and professional development of staff and students is expected as part of the School’s inclusive and supportive community.

Department of Medical Genetics

With immediate effect

The General Board, on the recommendation of the Council of the School of Clinical Medicine, has agreed to rename the Department of Medical Genetics. The new name will be the Department of Genomic Medicine.

Genetics is a term that refers to the study of genes and their roles in inheritance. Genomics is a more recent term that describes the study of all of a person’s genes (the genome), including interactions of those genes with each other and non-genetic factors. While single gene studies remain (and will always be) an important component of research activity, with the introduction of high throughput ‘next generation’ sequencing in the late 2000s there has been an increasing development of large-scale genomic and other ‘-omic’ research, which will accelerate further in the future. Translational clinical activity is following the same trajectory with more and more clinical testing being done via exome and whole‑genome sequencing. The consensus in the Department is that the current name no longer fully reflects the activity of the Department, and the new name of Department of Genomic Medicine best reflects the profound changes in this field over the last twenty years.

In Regulation 3 of the General Board Regulations for Departments and Heads of Departments (Statutes and Ordinances, 2024, p. 608), the listing of the Department has been updated to reflect the change in name.

The General Board has used its power under Regulation 4 of the Ordinance for Payments Additional to Stipend (Statutes and Ordinances, 2024, p. 686) to update the listing of the Department in Schedule 5 of that Ordinance.

The name of the Department has also been updated in the assignment of the Professorships of Medical Genetics (1997), (2007) and (2020), of Nephrology, of Molecular Neurogenetics, and of Statistics in Biomedicine as recorded in the Ordinance for Professors and Professorships established under Statute C IX (Statutes and Ordinances, 2024, p. 695). The titles of the Professorships of Medical Genetics are unchanged.

University Theatre Committee

The General Board, on the recommendation of the Chair of the University Theatre Committee, has approved a change to clarify the membership of the Committee drawn from the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club.

Regulation 3(d) of the General Board Regulations for the Committee1 has been revised to read as follows:

(d)(i)    the President of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, or an officer of the Club appointed by the Committee of the Club;

(ii)the Senior Treasurer of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, or a trustee of the Club appointed by the trustees of the Club;