Imperial College

Graduation day

The newly independent university celebrated the graduation of over 2000 undergraduates yesterday during a Commemoration Day ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall. Honorary doctorates were awarded to giant of genomics J Craig Venter, former CEO of BP Lord Browne, and Lisbet Rausing, an academic philanthropist based at Imperial.

Super-department

The College has consolidated its biological research by creating a Department of Life Sciences. The new entity brings together three existing Divisions: Biology, Molecular Biosciences, and Cell and Molecular Biology. Professor Ian Owens heads up the new department.

King’s College London

Generous legacy for science education

King’s has received a £1 million bequest from a former member of staff, the largest such sum in the institution’s history. The late Ros Driver was Professor of Science Education at King’s from 1995 to 1997. The Rosalind Driver Research Scholarship Fund will pay for up to three PhD students per year for 25 years, providing training for the next generation of science educators.

30 years of nursing

Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery at King’s College London celebrated three decades this week. The School, on the institution’s Waterloo campus, has around 1,300 trainee nurses and midwives and is the only such centre in London attached to a major university.

UCL

International partnerships

The university has signed a deal with Israel’s Weizmann Institute to increase scientific collaboration between the two. The agreement will see ‘regular forums, student exchanges and seed funding for research partnerships and collaborations with UK institutions’. Possible biomedical collaborations with Vietnamese institutions are also being explored.