admin | 4 Feb 2007 - 17:07 | All Subjects
The Universities of Birmingham, Nottingham and Warwick have recently announced the establishment of a joint graduate school for physics.
The Midlands Physics Alliance (MPA), has attracted £3.9m in funding from HEFCE and will see academics from all three institutions joining together for research and create a joint graduate school across the universities.
Postgraduate students will still get degrees from their own universities but in this new scheme will have access to staff at all three universities and, whilst some contact will be virtual, through video conferencing, there will be opportunities for physicists to meet, made easier by their geographical proximity.
The Universities clearly have high hopes for the new venture, from the viewpoint of research, as well as postgraduate students: their aim is to attract the best students, with the lure of the benefits of new and exciting initiatives through this combined initiative and contact with other high level postgraduate physicists.
The MPA is following the lead, although on a smaller scale, of Supa, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, an alliance between departments at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, Paisley, St Andrews, and Strathclyde. Supa also offered postgraduate studentships this year.
In Scotland, another new initiative has been announced backed by £77 milion: Six Scottish universities will join in a new Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance, bringing together departments in the Universities of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
See stories on this issue in The Guardian http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/postgraduat...
and The Scotsman www.Scotsman.com
