The Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, Minister for Universities, Science and Cities visited and officially opened our new state-of-the-art Advanced Composite Materials Facility. Read more here.

There are two exciting opportunities for EU grant submissions, both with deadlines early in the New Year. Read more here.

It’s been an exciting few months at the Malaysia Campus. Our students have been awarded prestigious scholarships and we’ve received approval to run our world-leading Masters in Aeronautics and Astronautics programme in Malaysia. Read more here.

“The surplus isn’t a profit, we are capturing growth and income so we can invest in the University’s infrastructure and ensure sustainability” – Sarah Pook, Director of Finance.

With the financial statements for the year being approved, how did the University do?

We achieved a surplus for the year of £15.4m on total turnover of £484m (the surplus representing 3.2 per cent of turnover).  This compares with a surplus of £5.8m in the previous year, with the year-on-year improvement reflecting the significant increase in student fee income and a more modest increase in expenditure levels. We have made significant progress in the last two years in building our surplus for re-investment, which helps build and sustain the reputation of the University.

We also grew our research income to £111m, having exceeded the £100m mark in 2012/13 for the first time. This shows the impact of our investment in excellent research and is a significant step forward for our strategic aims to grow and change the world for the better.

What are our key focus areas?

To invest in staff and to grow our academic staffing. Focusing on academic excellence and the student experience is critical for us. We have grown our academic staff by 377 FTE over the last three years. We also completed our capital programme with the opening of the Southampton Boldrewood Innovation Campus, a capital investment developed in partnership with Lloyds Register. This investment was funded with contributions from HEFCE and Lloyds Register, as well as our cash generated through in year surpluses. HEFCE capital is increasingly difficult to secure in times of austerity, and to carry on investing in such world-class facilities requires us to generate surpluses each year to deliver cash for longer term capital schemes.

What challenges do you foresee in achieving our financial goals for the coming year?

We are growing every year, and we need to be aware that this income growth has to deliver increased surpluses, which means managing the growth in our cost base whilst focusing on excellence. Our strategic financial target is to deliver a surplus of 5 per cent of the turnover, effectively replacing the HEFCE grants that have largely disappeared with the introduction of  £9,000 tuition fees.  It is important that we are able to maintain a sustainable infrastructure at the University to deliver an excellent student experience and maintain and develop our world-class research .

As well as the financial statements, we would like to know more about you, and your role at Southampton. How long have you been at the University and what has stood out to you?

I have been at the University for over three years now. It has been an interesting journey, as I joined from outside  of the sector at a time of the most significant change to higher education finances in some time. It was helpful that I could bring fresh perspectives on board, but it has also meant that I have sometimes not fully appreciated the cultural challenges of the changes underway. There has been a lot to learn, and I am still finding out new things every day, which is really fascinating for me.

What do you like about the University’s environment?

I like the buzz around the place. Although my role is not integrally linked with the students, I really look forward to opportunities to work with our students through the SUSU executive, our own internship programme and through career mentoring. Higher education is going through such an immense change and the impact that our research has is (to quote an academic from another institution) amazing. We are focused on growth and have ambitious goals. It is great to be able to contribute in some way to turning these visions into reality.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I mostly just ride horses. Spending time with family and friends and riding horses is all I do when I am not working.

To view our financial statements, click here.

Discussion with Professor Marie-Louise Newell – Professor of Global Health (Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Social and Human Sciences)

What is the GHRI aiming to achieve?
We are planning to build an interdisciplinary research platform where we aim to bring the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Social and Human Sciences under one roof to promote and enhance health, human development and quality of life across populations, globally. We are hoping to cover transnational issues in population health and wellbeing and explore factors associated with health in the broadest sense in a wide socio-behavioural, spatial, political, cultural, environmental, health and technological context.

What is your vison for the Institute?
The GHRI aims to become an internationally recognised research centre at the University directly or indirectly contributing to global health or related health technology/engineering research. Once we are established as a body at the University, at some point we may even will be able to take it outside the University environment and be able to build on the University’s reputation for being research intensive. We would aim to develop cost-effective and sustainable solutions and best practice interventions to reduce the global burden of both communicable and non-communicable diseases.

What is the framework and how you do plan to position the institute uniquely?
There are already various virtual networks of the University Strategic Research Groups (USRGs) under disciplines like Ageing and Lifelong Health, Bioinformatics; physical and chemical science, nanotechnology and even Engineering which we aim to bring together to form a cross disciplinary framework working together as a single entity. The Global Health research programme would initially focus on population-based and translational research on ‘Health across Generations’, which would build synergy and maximise existing expertise at the University, capitalising on the established research partnerships with institutions around the world and engaging new University research expertise wherever appropriate.

How do you plan to get the funding and infrastructure support?
The Deans of Medicine and Social and Human Sciences would develop an application for the University to fund the project by the end of March 2015. We would not need much infrastructure support in terms of laboratories as the Institute would be more data centric for research analysis

How did you get involved in the project?
I have a background of driving a similar initiative at the University College London and I also spent over 8 years in South Africa working on issues related to global health. That made me the obvious choice here at the University to lead this initiative.

Any other information you would want the share at this point?
The Faculty of Social and Human Sciences is planning to start a Master’s in Global Health’ in the next academic year. This would align with our vision and purpose of building the GHRI. You can find more information on the University website.

Southampton research is at the forefront of the worldwide battle to eradicate malaria. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Geographer Dr Andy Tatem’s research is changing the way we are tackling the elimination of malaria in individual countries and across continents.

How does malaria impact on people around the globe?

There were an estimated 207 million cases of malaria in 2012 and approximately 627,000 deaths. In 2012, malaria killed an estimated 482,000 children under five years of age, which equates to 1,300 children every day, or one child almost every minute. Between 2000 and 2012, the scale-up of interventions helped to reduce malaria incidence rates by 25 per cent globally, and by 31 per cent in the World Health Organization African Region.

How is mobile phone data helping us to understand and contain the spread of malaria?

We are using anonymised mobile phone usage data to map the movements of populations in and between malaria ‘hotspots’. Understanding the movements of a country’s population can be crucial in eliminating malaria. Attempts to clear the disease from an area can be ruined by highly mobile populations quickly reintroducing the parasite. We have created population mobility maps with this data, which are making the eradication of malaria a real possibility. Because humans and mosquitoes carry the disease from endemic areas across international boundaries and within countries, it is crucially important to monitor and contain outbreaks and avoid endemic transmission from restarting.

Who have you been working with on this research?

We have led an international study into this area alongside the National Vector-borne Diseases Control Programme (NVDCP) in Namibia and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). Additionally, we have been funded by the Bill and Melinda gates Foundation, and worked in collaboration with the World Health Organization.

How are we using population mapping to affect change in society?

Our maps and data are helping charities, policy-makers, governments and researchers to make decisions which affect the quality of people’s lives. These could be as diverse as predicting the spread of infectious diseases, planning the development of transport systems or distributing vital aid to disaster zones. In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines with devastating effect, international organisations were able to download information about pre-typhoon population distribution from our website to help with estimating impact and delivering aid efforts,

The Institute for Learning Innovation and Development (ILIaD) provides expertise, support and professional development to help the University realise its strategic ambition of revolutionising our educational offering by 2020. ILIaD launched on Monday 3 November with a conference in the Harley Suite, with exhibition stands, a series of ‘mini-presentations and ‘drop-in’ sessions throughout the day. Attendees were offered the chance to learn more about the fundamental objectives of ILIaD, including the creation of a community of practice collaborating to deliver educational innovation and research.

The fully booked conference was opened by a Key Note speech  from  Helen Beetham, titled Revolution and or Resilience – Learning for an Uncertain Future, which set the tone of the day.  Lively discussions and presentations ensued with staff from across the University, as well as external contributors,  sharing examples of their innovative work and ideas for further collaborations. The conference also saw the first fellowship of ILIaD awarded to Simon Kemp, Principal Teaching Fellow in Engineering and the Environment.

To read more about how ILIaD will help deliver our ambition to revolutionise our educational offering, please visit their webpages.

The launch event culminated with Professor Hugh Davis’ thought provoking Inaugural lecture, Breaking the Mould – How Technologies Change the way we Learn.

If you are interested in joiningILIaD’s Community of Practice, please visit their membership webpage.

You can also view their launch video on YouTube.

The Web Development project is one of the key strategic projects to support the delivery of the University strategy 2020. The project is led by Sophie Dear, Head of Digital within Communications and Marketing.

Could you explain to us why we are undertaking the web development project?

The web is one of the primary communication tools for the University. Its reach and influence on a global scale grows daily, as do the expectations of our customers and stakeholders that engage with us through this channel.

While user testing and market research suggest that external perceptions of the University website are by no means negative, our current situation is not sustainable. We need to fundamentally change the way we produce, maintain and govern our website. Our web presence currently consists of hundreds of thousands of pages, many that duplicate each other or are simply not kept up-to-date.  With so much choice and ‘noise’ on the web, our content needs to be findable, engaging, concise  and  targeted to the user it is intended for.

What are the key features of the project?

The project takes a holistic approach and addresses all areas that play a role in the development of our web. These include content, navigation and structure, design, usability, governance and the underlying Content Management System. The project is split into six key work packages that in turn address each of these areas. Information on each of the work packages can be found on the project SharePoint site.

How will this impact on our day-to-day working lives?

Throughout the course of the project we will be engaging with staff at all levels from all faculties and professional services.  We aim to minimise the resource required from University staff by hiring additional team members to carry out the actual work, however advisory input is required to gain insight into the objectives of the faculties and services. Students and external stakeholders will also be engaged throughout the project to test and refine outputs. Once completed the project will deliver benefits to staff in the way they maintain their web content.

What will be the impact for students and applicants?

The project scope has been set to web pages for external facing audience groups and has been prioritised to ensure the work packages that deliver external facing improvements for these groups are completed first. In terms of the benefits delivered, prospective students and other key stakeholders will be able to access our websites from any device or location, they will be able to find the content they need easily and intuitively and engage with us in a method of their choosing.

Further information

Further information can be found on the Web Development project SharePoint site or to sign up for the monthly project update, please email digital@soton.ac.uk