Cambridge: new vice chancellor takes up office

Leszek Borysiewicz has taken up office as the 345th Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, succeeding Alison Richard. Borysiewicz was previously Chief Executive of the UK’s Medical Research Council from 2007, and from 2001 to 2007 was at Imperial College London, where he served as Principal of the Faculty of Medicine and later as Deputy Rector.

In an inaugural speech following his admission Borysiewicz said, “The challenge to the new Vice-Chancellor is clear. It is to lead the university in a competitive and difficult economic environment, to secure our financial base despite short-term fluctuations, develop an infrastructure commensurate with an internationally leading university, and ensure the best possible environment to recruit and retain academic staff of the highest quality.”

Borysiewicz first came to Cambridge in 1987 as a Wellcome Trust Senior Lecturer at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, then a year later joined the university as a lecturer in medicine and a Fellow of Wolfson College. He moved back to his birthplace, Cardiff, in 2001 where he served ten years as Professor of Medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine.

In his speech the new vice chancellor said research excellence, “Is the defining feature of our institutional landscape. [...] A high level of research income is necessary in many academic disciplines but it is all too easy to believe that this alone can be a proxy for research excellence. We all recognise that research of the highest quality is often achieved with much lower levels of funding in some disciplines and in an internationally leading university this success must also be applauded and supported.”

Borysiewicz said the bottom-up model for a research-led university is being challenged in many spheres of research endeavour by ‘top-down’ or ‘grand challenges’ approaches increasingly favoured by national and international funders. “I am very conscious of the leadership shown by many members of the university and their inherent instinct for collaboration that is promoting the development of large-scale initiatives of global importance to society and embracing researchers from all disciplines.”

To maintain its pre-eminence, the university will have to accommodate this trend, while retaining the ‘investigator-led’ approach. “This requires us to continue to support academic diversity within the university, through the excellence of individuals, departments, faculties and schools but simultaneously to enable and empower interdisciplinary support for large collaborative projects.”

Cambridge’s database records 2,758 collaborations in 142 countries encompassing most of academic disciplines. “We must continue to encourage such interactions at the project/investigator level, but we must also consider how we ensure that appropriate institutional linkages in support of this activity can be forged,” Borysiewicz said.

There are new and future opportunities that Cambridge must consider. “From a personal perspective, Europe and the EU are often forgotten but developments such as Joint Programming, Framework Programme 8 and the European Research Area will need to be explored. As Europe’s leading university, it behoves us not to let any such opportunity pass us by,” said Borysiewicz.