Answering the big questions
8 July 2010
Three major new Research Institutes, offering radical new approaches to cancer, mental health and sustainability have been announced by the University. Each Institute combines academic talents from a number of disciplines, building on Cardiff’s existing strengths and creating a critical mass of expertise to tackle issues of global importance.
In this edition of Blas, Vice-Chancellor Dr David Grant introduces the three new Research Institutes and outlines the global challenges each will address.
Poor mental health affects some 16.7M people in the UK today. The estimated cost to the economy is almost £80BN a year - £7.2BN here in Wales alone. This is to say nothing of the loss of quality of life for sufferers and those who love them.
The world’s population is predicted to reach 9BN by 2050, yet global agricultural food output will fall 16 per cent. The increasing strains on food, energy, water, soil and bio-diversity will force cities and their regions around the world to re-assess their existing consumption patterns. In Wales, we each have an ecological footprint of 4.4 global hectares – meaning that we are using more than double our share of the world’s resources to support our lifestyles.
Cancer presently kills 7.6M people on this planet every year. In the UK, nearly 300,000 new cases are diagnosed every year, 19,000 of them in Wales, accounting for around five per cent of NHS spending. Survival rates, even after treatment, remain tragically low in many cases.
Healthcare and a sustainable environment are examples of challenges facing society today. With those and other challenges in mind, the University has selected three research areas which will receive additional resources to become interdisciplinary Research Institutes with the potential to make a global impact. This forms part of our strategy to enhance the quality, volume and impact of our work and to build on Cardiff’s reputation as a centre for world-leading, agenda-setting research.
The three new Cardiff University Research Institutes are:
Neurosciences and Mental Health Research Institute Cardiff has made many world-leading breakthroughs on the genetic origins of psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The Institute will put these discoveries into practice, linking researchers in several academic schools on developing therapies for a range of diseases which span from childhood to old age.
Sustainable Places Research Institute This Institute adopts two distinctive aspects in its approach to sustainability. First, it will create integrated solutions drawing on many different specialisms – buildings, energy systems, communities, the natural environment, infrastructure, health and policy-making. These solutions will be tailored to the individual needs of different locations around the world, including Cardiff itself, adapting policy and practice to local environmental and social circumstances.
Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute This Institute will explore the potential of a new approach to cancer treatment. It may be possible to treat cancer by focusing on a small number of cells in each tumour, rather than all the cells, as present treatments do. The Institute will investigate the importance of these cells – cancer stem cells – across the range of the most common cancers.
These Research Institutes address growing challenges to society. I believe that at Cardiff University we have the talent and the commitment to come up with new solutions to all three. These are exciting developments in the history of the University, and I hope you share in that excitement.
Dr David Grant
Vice-Chancellor
Read more on the Research Institutes in the latest edition of Cardiff News available now online: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/newsletter/
For more information on the bids process visit the Planning Division’s website: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/plann/researchinstitutescall/index.html
Visit the Research Institutes new dedicated websites to watch films, read profiles of the research teams, follow Twitter updates, along with Facebook integration and more.
Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute
Neurosciences and Mental Health Research Institute
Sustainable Places Research Institute
Watch a video about the Neurosciences and Mental Health Research Institute
Watch a video about the Sustainable Places Research Institute
Watch a video about the Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute
