Dear colleague,
Thanks to all those who joined our virtual town hall event yesterday, where we covered preparations for this academic year quite extensively. I hope it proved useful for those who attended and if you missed it, a subtitled version will be available online early next week.
Student Social Mobility Awards
I am really proud of the achievements of our community at the upReach Student Social Mobility Awards last week. Our Gold Scholarship Programme won the Highest Impact University Initiative Award at the event, held at the House of Lords on 9 September. In addition, Gold Scholar Gracie Stavers won the Outstanding Achievement Award for her academic accomplishments and her engagement in science outreach work and resource development for Bath schoolchildren.
It is fantastic to see such recognition for this important area of our work and of the individuals who have worked so hard to make such important progress. My warmest congratulations to Gracie and to the whole team who make our Gold Scholarships Programme such a success, including Liz Simmons, our Scholarship & Bursary Enrichment Manager.
Guardian University Guide and The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide
As you may have already seen, we have retained our top ten ranking in recent tables, ranking 8th in the UK in the 2022 Guardian University Guide. We remain number one in the South West. Overall, we were second in course satisfaction and seven subjects were in the top five, which is a real tribute to the work of colleagues.
There has been further good news today in that we’ve retained our position as 9th in the UK in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2022, and we also remain top amongst universities in the South West in this league table.
Many congratulations on these achievements.
New research computing environments
Over the last seven years, our High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility, Balena, has supported a growing and wide range of research activities across the University.
We are now investing in the development of a cloud-based HPC environment, and a new on-campus High Throughput Ccomputing (HTC) cluster, in addition to the continuing access to the Isambard service. These new research computing environments will continue to provide the access needed for Bath to engage in globally-leading computationally intensive research.
This new research computing infrastructure will gradually replace Balena over the coming months and Balena will be retired early next year. The project team will be holding a virtual meeting on 23 September to share and discuss the roadmap.
Vaccination clinics on campus
Local health clinicians will be on campus on a number of dates from 24 September and into October, offering free first and second doses of the Pfizer vaccine to students who may not yet have had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated. Information about these clinics is available online and an e-mail is being sent to all students next Monday.
Next week, more information will also be available on assisted lateral flow diagnostic (LFD) testing for arriving students, and on the collection points for free LFD tests for staff and students to use for home testing. In the meantime, colleagues can continue to collect free LFD tests from the Sports Training Village reception or to order them online to their home address.
Finally, congratulations to Dr Vivek Soundararajan and Dr Daniel Loughran who have been named among the UK’s most promising science and research leaders, securing Future Leader Fellowships from UK Research and Innovation. You can read more about their fascinating research on our webpages.
With best wishes,
Professor Ian White
Vice-Chancellor and President
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