Welcome to the GW4 Newsletter for March 2020: your regular digest of GW4 news, funding and development opportunities. To subscribe to the GW4 Newsletter click here.
Directors Update:
What a difference a month makes! Like many others myself, the GW4 team and our colleagues are adjusting to working from home and finding new ways of delivering our content. While so much has changed in such a relatively short time, it’s been fantastic to see our GW4 universities and universities nationwide stepping up to the fight against COVID-19.
Scientists at Cardiff University and the University of Exeter are part of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium. This £20m project brings together experts from across the NHS, public health agencies and academia to map the spread of COVID-19. This is just one of countless examples I could share with you. From research support to medical equipment, food supplies to volunteers – check out our GW4 Twitter feed for more on how our GW4 universities and partners are helping to tackle this unprecedented challenge.
During this time, it is more important than ever before that we co-ordinate our response and collaborate, not only as an Alliance but with our partners and other groups to share ideas, tools and techniques.
Finally, I echo the sentiment of our GW4 Chair of Council, Vice Chancellor of the University of Exeter, Sir Steve Smith in his article in Times Higher Education: “If this crisis has shown us one thing, it is that experts and expertise matter…Universities are going to have a very important role to play in national recovery and rebuilding. I think the ways in which the sector has responded to this current crisis will further embed universities into their communities, showing that they are truly anchor institutions in their regions.”
