News round-up

The formal opening of a new research centre at the University has taken place – signalling a transformation in the level of neurological work academics can undertake. The Brain Research & Imaging Centre (BRIC) consists of seven cutting-edge human neuroimaging research laboratories to help better understand brain activity and human behaviour. One of the laboratories contains a Siemens Prisma MRI scanner equipped with multiple additional brain imaging technologies, establishing the first multi-modal MRI facility in the region.

BRIC is a unique collaboration between the University, the research charity DDRC Healthcare and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (UHPNT) and is located at Plymouth Science Park. It forms part of the expansion of the Hyperbaric Medical Centre, providing improved facilities for research and the treatment of scuba divers, along with delivery of advanced medical training. University researchers have already been using the facility and postgraduate students in human neuroscience are also being taught there.

The Peninsula Dental School is to be one of just two hosts for the UK’s first residential programme based around dentistry. The Medical and Dental Schools Councils series of Summer Schools 2022 is funded by Health Education England and has been set up to widen participation and access to dentistry and help create a greater diversity in the dental profession.

The programme will welcome 35 Year 11 and 12 students onto campus and focus on supporting their journey into dental education, from the admissions and selection process to life beyond dental school, showing the range of careers within the oral healthcare profession. By detailing the specifics of dental school, including study skills and revision workshops and even going through a mock entrance interview, the University will hope to break down barriers. The four-day, three-night summer school will recruit from South West schools, and will also include supervised trips to places of interest around the locality.

Professor Christopher Tredwin, Head of the Peninsula Dental School, said: 

A new post-COP26 Doctoral-Training Partnership (DTP) focusing on the challenges and opportunities relating to our global climate has been launched by the University in collaboration with University College Cork. 

The DTP will focus on research proposals related to climate challenges and opportunities in four key areas: Delivering the Blue Economy; Building Resilient Coastal Communities; Achieving and Maintaining Healthy Landscapes; and Enabling the Zero Carbon Energy Transition.

The DTP will host six PhD students, who will be supervised by staff from both institutions, bridging natural and social sciences.

The remarkable discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, Endurance, in March, after more than 100 years at the bottom of the Weddell Sea was greeted with universal acclaim by marine archaeologists around the world. Immaculately preserved some 3,000m below sea-level, the vessel was located by a project team from the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust using an icebreaker and submersibles, bringing to a close a truly iconic story of human endeavour. 

For two environmental law experts in the University’s School of Society and Culture, however, the discovery had extra resonance. Jason Lowther, Associate Professor of Law, and Michael Williams, Visiting Professor and Research Fellow, were the lead authors of a groundbreaking policy that protects underwater heritage in Antarctica, ensuring merchant vessels like Endurance can never be salvaged by third parties. The pair worked with the Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust and a marine archaeologist at Bournemouth University to create the policy under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, specifically to address concerns that undiscovered wrecks, such as Endurance, might be at risk of salvage. The policy was passed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2018, and Endurance added to the list of underwater cultural heritage belonging to the British Antarctic Territory.