Full speech transcript
Good morning. A very warm welcome to the new academic year and special congratulations to the proctors for this year, newly elected.
It is conventional, at the opening of this address, for the Vice Chancellor to run through all the brilliant things our academics and students have done in the past year – the discoveries, awards won, grants received, books published, degrees with distinction, sporting victories, careers launched, and other headline-grabbing milestones in research and education that define a year at Cambridge. It is conventional, and it is tempting, for these are the things that Cambridge is known for, that make us all feel good, and that give the work of this University meaning. They are the things that get me out of bed in the morning, to be honest, and that give me joy.
But I am going to resist temptation. Instead, I am going to talk about what the University is doing to enable the flow of these brilliant things to continue unabated into the foreseeable future and to have the impact on society and the world that they need to have.
As I was preparing to write this address, I went back and read the addresses of my predecessors, back to 2003 when we started putting them up on the website. They are a fascinating read – I commend them to you if you have a few hours on your hands. Taken together, they offer an in-time narrative of the history of the University in the 21st century so far. Three elements emerge clearly in that narrative.
One element is Cambridge’s enduring features. These include the markers of success – the brilliant people doing brilliant things that I mentioned earlier. They include enduring questions: What should be the size and shape of the Collegiate University? How should research and teaching responsibilities be allocated? They include enduring challenges: widening participation, for example, and interdisciplinarity. And central to the narrative are enduring relationships: between the University and the Colleges, with government, with alumni. These topics come up again and again, reflecting their centrality in the University’s mission.
A second element of the narrative is the broader context in which the Collegiate University operates. This includes everything from government policies and regulations related to higher education to the state of the regional and national economy, broader government strategies, partnerships, competitive pressures, world-changing events like Brexit and the pandemic, you name it – a range of factors, external to the University, that impinge on its ability to deliver on its mission. These factors hum along in the background of the narrative, occasionally mentioned but always there, setting the tone and defining the terms in which the University operates. Over the past 22 years, they have been responsible for much of the drama and suspense in the University’s story, including a few plot-twists and cliff-hangers.
The interaction of the University and the context gives rise to the third element of the narrative, which is the major initiatives that have defined this period in the University’s history. These include the growth of philanthropy and alumni engagement in both the Colleges and the University, the development of West and Northwest Cambridge, the continued expansion of the Biomedical Campus, and the Student Support Initiative. These initiatives feature prominently in the narrative all the way back to 2003; they exist at the intersection of mission, opportunity, and necessity, and are building blocks of our story going forward.
The intersection of mission, opportunity, and necessity is a very special place at the University of Cambridge, fertile ground for creation, invention, and innovation of all sorts. When I am asked what has enabled Cambridge to develop such a vibrant innovation ecosystem, I point to this intersection: We bring brilliant, motivated people together in a space of great intellectual riches, give them little structure, a modicum of resources, and let them run free. They find their way to what’s interesting, what’s promising, and what’s lucrative. It’s not that simple, of course, but the core of that description is right.
Most of the University’s major investments in recent years have been in the service of that model. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus started out as nothing more than a greenfield site for a new Addenbrooke’s Hospital, a new Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and the University’s Department of Radiotherapeutics. But over the last 20 years, with vision, effort, and a huge amount of investment, it has developed into a thriving hub for research and innovation in the life sciences, bringing together the University, the NHS, and industry on a single site.
The West Cambridge site, likewise, started out as a place to put new departments that had nowhere else to go. The first out there was the Department of Veterinary Medicine in 1955. Then came the Whittle Lab in 1973. Then the British Antarctic Survey followed closely by Cavendish II. There wasn’t much of a plan until about 20 years ago, when a critical mass of University activity had located there and the opportunity to develop the site more strategically became clear. West Cambridge as an innovation district came into view only recently with the opening of the West Hub in 2022.
The Eddington site, in Northwest Cambridge, followed a different trajectory. Here, the plan preceded the development, and building started with a hub – a University primary school that is now proudly celebrating its tenth anniversary. So Eddington skipped the dumping-ground phase and began as a strategic development, designed to support and expand the population of post-grads, post-docs, and other staff to power research and innovation at the University.
The use of placemaking to support knowledge creation and innovation is a recent development in the University but, in fact, Cambridge has a long history of creating environments that bring people together to fulfil its academic mission. The Colleges were the pioneers here, and it is perhaps because they did this so well that the University did not need to. University buildings were originally designed to house research materials, equipment, and staff. Placemaking came later, starting with the first Cavendish Laboratory, and then its spin-out, the LMB. Now, we recognise the importance of placemaking, not as an end in itself but as a means to enabling our talented staff and students to do their best work.
Moving forward, we are deploying placemaking in multiple sites to take our research and innovation ecosystem to the next level of maturity. On the biomedical campus, we are partnering on plans for a Cancer Research Hospital that will close the distance between bench and bedside, delivering innovative solutions that will transform the lives of cancer patients. We are partners in a new children’s hospital that will integrate mental and physical health, translating research on prevention and the early diagnosis of disease into children’s care. Each of these hospitals is so much more than another big building; they will be brilliant, innovative spaces bringing people together to pioneer new ways of improving health. We are actively working with our NHS partners to turn our shared visions for these hospitals into reality. Enabling work has been undertaken, and we are making good progress with philanthropic fundraising.
At West Cambridge, we are planning the next phase of development, this time with a vision: A vision, 20 years in the making, to combine all of Engineering once again on one site. A vision in which academic departments co-locate with industry partners, national research institutes, scaling companies, and investors to create the leading location in Europe for AI, quantum, and climate research. A vision of a scale of research activity that will attract leading companies and research talent to the UK, on a site designed to best-in-class environmental specifications and with attention to outdoor as well as indoor spaces. This vision builds on what is already in place at West Cambridge, but recasts, redevelops, and expands on it in a more purposeful and strategic way, so that the people we want to attract and bring together – the researchers, teachers, and innovators from academia, industry, and the start-up world – will all be able to see themselves there.
In the centre of Cambridge, we are building an Innovation Hub that will bring together spinouts, startups, scaling companies, corporate innovation teams, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and our world-class research community, all in a facility located at 1-3 Hills Road, just a short walk from the train station.
The vision for this hub, and indeed for much of our expanded innovation ecosystem, is borrowed shamelessly from the development of Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A group of us went to see key people and the physical infrastructure they created in Kendall Square, and we were struck by the lessons for the development of our Cambridge. About 15 years ago, faced with competition from Silicon Valley and other innovation districts, stakeholders at MIT and Harvard took a couple of important decisions: first of all to cooperate rather than compete, and second, to invest on a large scale in lab space, incubator space, equipment, hubs – the infrastructure needed to support deep-tech and life-science start-ups. The result was a step-change in their translation capabilities, their social and economic impact, and critically, their ability to attract and retain top academic talent at all levels. We can do the same.
Of course, we, the University of Cambridge, cannot do all this alone. That’s why we have been working with central and local government, major employers across the city and region, and partners in academia and the start-up world across the UK and beyond. The degree of alignment, and indeed excitement, around this vision is extremely encouraging. Government has long taken an interest in building on the success of Cambridge and increasingly has come to focus on Cambridge as central to their growth agenda. This is where opportunity bleeds over into necessity, for Britain must grow. Here in Cambridge, government investment in our development means that obstacles to our growth – the lack of water, transportation infrastructure, and affordable housing, for example – might finally be addressed.
In the narrative of Cambridge in the 21st century, problems with water, transportation, and affordable housing receive multiple mentions. Alison Richard complained about the traffic back in October 2007, and Leszek Borysiewicz lamented the lack of affordable housing every year as he made the case for the development of Northwest Cambridge. It is high time we found solutions to these problems.
Yet the responsibilities that come with growth extend far beyond the City’s infrastructure. If the City of Cambridge is to expand its innovation ecosystem to produce growth for the region and country, it must ensure that growth is achieved in a fairer and more inclusive way. Much of this responsibility rests with the University, as a major stakeholder in the region, as one that stands to benefit enormously from innovation-led growth, and perhaps most importantly, as the home of the clever people needed to design it. There is no playbook for inclusive innovation – we can’t go to Cambridge, Mass or Silicon Valley to see how it is done. We have to invent it here, in our city. We believe the same creativity, ingenuity, and commitment the University brings to innovation can be harnessed to ensure that the opportunities that innovation creates reach those who have been left behind.
Some initial work is already in train. The civic engagement function established last year is now driving impact, building on existing activity, strengthening local partnerships, and supporting inclusive, place-based collaboration. Across the University and Colleges, civic activity is flourishing – from the Colleges and City Council Charities Partnership to outreach from all of the University’s museums and the botanic garden and new city-wide initiatives focused on skills and youth opportunities.
Moving forward, new facilities, starting with the West Hub, the Innovation Hub, and the two new hospitals will be for everyone in the community. The Children’s Hospital is looking at how they can bring their activity out to families across East Anglia through local surgeries. Discussions are underway, spearheaded by Innovate Cambridge, of what inclusive innovation means and how to create it. And we now have a city-to-city partnership with Manchester, funded by Research England, through which we can experiment with different inclusion strategies and learn from each other. We do not yet have all the answers about how to use innovation-led growth to create a more equal Cambridge, a more equal East of England, but our commitment to find them is real.
In an 816-year-old university, one has to be able to seize opportunity from the jaws of necessity. Such is the case on the Sidgwick Site, where the Grade-II*-listed Stirling building needs restoration. We are treating this necessity as an opportunity to do a bit of placemaking. In addition to completing the necessary repairs, the Stirling restoration, which begins this year, will improve the building’s accessibility, safety, and comfort, while reducing its carbon footprint and improving its climate resilience. It will create beautiful new learning and working environments open to everybody on the Sidgwick site. It will improve the landscape around the building to enhance biodiversity and invite people in. To quote Tim Harper, former Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences: "The project is true to James Stirling's vision in that it looks to the future. It will enable all those who use the building to work together in new and exciting ways."
The restoration of the Stirling Building is a way into a larger opportunity for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences to develop a new vision for the Sidgwick site, one that centres on their academic mission. The process is well-underway, anchored by the same questions that colleagues are asking at West Cambridge and on the Biomedical Campus: Where is scholarship going and how should that be reflected in the spatial geography of our buildings? What sort of environment do our staff and students need to do their best work? Who should encounter whom in this space, and how can the physical environment make those encounters more likely?
A key question in this process is how the Sidgwick site relates to its neighbour, the University Library. The UL will be celebrating its centenary on its current site in 2034, and in anticipation, has been asking some of these very same questions: How can it refashion its historic estate to serve the needs of research and scholarship in the 21st century? The UL is an amazing building on an enormous site, positioned centrally between West Cambridge and the City Centre, with the Sidgwick site and many Colleges nearby. It holds huge opportunity for an exciting restoration project.
And for years now, similar conversations have been going on at the Downing Site, where the School of Biological Sciences has been working with the Estates Division. The School has championed new ways of working across traditional departmental boundaries, establishing cross-disciplinary interactions that will drive research innovation across the biological sciences over the next decade. They now have an estates plan that will transform their teaching and research space using only 80 percent of their current square footage, thereby improving their environmental and financial sustainability, while providing a collaborative working and studying environment fit for the biosciences of the future. This is what we need to do across the historic estate, and we are now very close to having a full vision for it.
I have talked a lot about sites and buildings; now, let me turn to the most important part of our ecosystem which is its people: The people who encounter each other on these sites, exchange ideas, work together, and change the world. All the buildings, the infrastructure, the programmes, and the partnerships are about bringing brilliant people to Cambridge and enabling them to do their best work in a supportive environment, where academic freedom and freedom of speech are at the core. So let me make a couple of observations about the University’s people in the current conjuncture.
One, this is a moment of extraordinary opportunity. The financial challenges to higher education in this country and the myriad challenges to higher education abroad have led many more people than usual to our door. For example, we had more interest from the U.S. for everything we advertised this year, from undergraduate places and postgraduate places to every level of academic and professional-services staff position. And we could recruit people, even when they had to take significant cuts in salary to come.
I would expect this opportunity to persist, at least for a few years. It is a good time to be at Cambridge. We are not flush with resources by any means, but we have access to income streams that give us greater resilience than most of our peers in the UK. As for international comparisons: What scholars and students need to do their work is three things: freedom, time, and stability. We can offer those things, much better than most.
And while I am talking about our comparative advantages, let me take this opportunity to welcome a new cohort of students to Cambridge, and to wish you well; and also to welcome back returning students. For the newcomers, this is a time of change, possibility, and hope. We continue to make progress in attracting talent from more diverse backgrounds. This autumn, I will make my latest trip to an area where we attract a disproportionately low number of students: in this case, the North-East of England. Just as I did in the North-West and the South-West, I look forward to hearing views about Cambridge from students, parents, and teachers there, and learning how we might better attract talent to come here.
My second observation is that this is also a moment of escalating need for PhD funding. The Research Councils, long our primary source of this funding, have reduced support suddenly and sharply -- well over 50% cuts in many cases. Cambridge gets incredible PhD applicants, and we have always accepted many more than we could fund. Now the gap between the number accepted and the number funded – which you can think of as the amount of talent that is slipping away from us – is simply untenable.
The good news is that other funders are stepping up. The Colleges have been focused on bringing in PhD support, and Trinity College has put in its own resources. They established a scheme in which they are match-funding about 30 PhD students a year for six years. Donors have responded to our call: We have secured over £75 million to endow more than 80 PhDs in perpetuity. And industry partners are an important source: AstraZeneca has funded over 100 PhD students at Cambridge in the past 10 years. With a more diversified approach, we are confident we can close the gap in PhD funding, but it will take a sustained effort over many years.
That is why we are making PhD support a key objective of the next fundraising campaign, which will launch within two years’ time. In our last campaign, we raised a significant amount of PhD support as part of the £500 million Student Support Initiative; in the next campaign, we plan to set a financial goal based on what it would take to fund fully all the PhD students offered places in Cambridge departments.
My third observation is that this is a moment of significant change at the University. We are modernising our systems and processes, and that is making new demands on our professional-services staff. Fortunately, they are meeting the challenge of upskilling. One of the most impressive efforts is the University of Cambridge Data Academy, a data apprenticeship programme that is training professional-services staff from the University to use data in their work. In the first year of the programme, 224 staff used their new-found skills to ask better questions, make better decisions, and save the University time and money.
Finally, let me acknowledge that this is a moment of considerable difficulty for the university sector. I fully recognise the strong headwinds facing higher education, from a number of directions. The financial challenges of the sector are real and should be of concern to anyone invested in the future of this country. They are certainly of concern to me. Yet I am also positive and optimistic about Cambridge’s future, and a huge source of that optimism is the brilliant people I work with every day.
I would like to close with a warm word of congratulations and welcome to office for our new Chancellor, Chris Smith, The Lord Smith of Finsbury, until recently Master of Pembroke College. His election by the Senate involved one of the most significant mobilisations of our alumni in history – over 25,000 people voted, most of them alumni, voting online from around the globe and in-person here in the Senate House. The role of the Chancellor is to advocate for and support the University’s strategic aims and interests. How fortunate for Cambridge that Lord Smith, known for breaking down barriers in society and leading inclusion by example, is stepping into this role.
Let me wish you all a very successful start to the academic year. Thank you.
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