Invenite 2021 Issue 5

CAMPUS MASTERPLAN Iconic buildings and transformational redevelopments: the University’s estate is evolving for the future

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE How the Coastal Processes Research Group became world leaders in their field

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Al u m n i & Fr i en ds m a g a z i n e

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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT Danny Cooke and his panoramic life behind the camera

Invenite GUEST FEATURE Travel writer and zoologist Jane Wilson-Howarth recounts some of her international adventures since graduating from the University

THE BIG INTERVIEW From Mount Everest to the city of Plymouth: Professor Daniel Martin OBE on his academic path to the University

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Welcome Much has changed in our world since I last wrote to you via the pages of Invenite.

Let me say at the outset that I hope that you, our University of Plymouth alumni and supporters, are safe and well, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

For the staff and students here, these past 12 months have forced us to consider how we continue to nurture our academic community when the face-to-face dynamic upon which it is founded is fundamentally challenged.

I am proud to say that they have been equal to that challenge: through tireless endeavour and collegiate collaboration finding practical and effective solutions. With empathy and compassion, they have supported one another in juggling family commitments and a rapidly changing working environment. The result is that together, in just a matter of weeks, the University achieved things that it would take most institutions years to implement.

Our ability to respond and redefine the way we do things is one of the reasons why I am so confident in the future of our University. It is a confidence that I see reflected in the themes of this publication.

We are attracting leading academics, strengthening our existing areas of international excellence and growing our research expertise in new and emerging fields. We are reshaping our estate through a visionary campus masterplan, one that is helping to regenerate important areas of the city of Plymouth in the process. And we are continuing to produce remarkable graduates, who are building vibrant businesses and exciting careers based upon ‘doing what they love’.

It may take time for society and the economy to recover and rebuild, but I am sure that our University will play an important role in that process, whether locally or beyond.

I have no doubt that the University of Plymouth will continue to respond to any challenges with great confidence and resilience. As our community of friends and graduates, you are crucial in our future success. Thank you for all you do for our University.

I hope that you enjoy this issue, and stay safe.

Professor Judith Petts CBE, Vice-Chancellor

Cover image: Professor Daniel Martin OBE

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We would love to hear from you and know your thoughts on the magazine – please get in touch by emailing alumni@plymouth.ac.uk. For the latest news from Plymouth and its community of alumni of friends, you can follow us on social media.

 @PlymUniAlum  University of Plymouth Alumni  @plymouthunialumni  plymouth.ac.uk/alumni Content Editor – Andrew Merrington, Graphic Designers – Kate Sardella, Lee Mattock, Zachary Child, Lauren Porter, Tara Tregidgo, Digital Designer – Catherine Hemsley, Photography – Lloyd Russell, Proofreaders – Alice Li and Sarah Dunstall, Head of Development and Alumni Engagement – Rachel Brown, Alumni Engagement – Karen Teague, Samantha Davis, Print Production – Design and Print Centre, University of Plymouth, Printer – Deltor Communications Ltd. University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA

The University is committed to promoting equality and diversity. If you require information from this publication in an alternative format, please email alumni@plymouth.ac.uk

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Ne w s Ro u n d U p SCIENTISTS SCALING NEW HEIGHTS IN SEARCH FOR MICROPLASTICS

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Scientists from the University have identified the highest recorded microplastics ever found on Earth – on Mount Everest. Substantial quantities of polyester, acrylic, nylon and polypropylene were found in samples taken from heights of up to 8,440 metres, suggesting that clothing and climbing and camping gear could be contributing to plastic pollution. The samples were collected in 2019, as part of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, and then analysed in specialist facilities in Plymouth.

“Microplastics are generated by a range of sources and many aspects of our daily lives can lead to microplastics entering the environment,” said Research Fellow and National Geographic Explorer Dr Imogen Napper, the lead author of the study published in One Earth. “Over the past few years, we have found microplastics in samples collected all over the planet – from the Arctic to our rivers and the deep seas. With that in mind, finding microplastics near the summit of Mount Everest is a timely reminder that we need to do more to protect our environment.”

Dr Imogen Napper

The paper, produced with colleagues from the UK, USA and Nepal, drew a huge amount of international media coverage and capped a memorable 2020 for the University’s International Marine Litter Research Unit. This included the publication of major studies on laundry devices, lint and tyre particles; the award of more than £1 million pounds of new research funding; and landmark moments such as the award of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education, and a Fellowship of the Royal Society for Professor Richard Thompson OBE FRS.

Responding to coronavirus The coronavirus pandemic has had a huge impact upon all levels of society – but it has also brought out the best in many people. That has certainly been the case at the University, where staff and students have displayed compassion and a can-do spirit to support community projects and the health sector. Many students from the Faculty of Health, for example, have volunteered on the frontline of the NHS, and the 2020 cohort of doctors graduated early to launch their careers at the time of need.

Engineers and technicians answered the call for personal protective equipment for the NHS, such as through a city-wide consortium to manufacture components, including 3D printed face shields. They used 3D printing equipment housed in the new Digital Fabrication Laboratory and the Plymouth Electron Microscopy Centre, as well as labs within the Smeaton Building and at Plymouth Science Park. And in a separate project, Dr Antony Robotham, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, worked with local company Prestige Packaging to develop and create 20,000 shields for procurement. He subsequently received the President’s Special Award for Pandemic Service from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Dr Antony Robotham

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D-Day discovery by wartime history expert

“The nine S-boats at sea that night carried between them 36 torpedoes,” said Dr Bennett. “Perhaps only five found their targets as a result of good fortune and

Lyme Bay, Dorset

professionalism on the part of the United States and Royal navies. The potential for the tragedy of Exercise Tiger that night to have assumed even bigger proportions is obvious.”

FUNDING AWARDED TO CREATE NATIONAL TEST FACILITY FOR RENEWABLE TECHNOLOGY The University has been awarded more than £1 million to create a unique facility for testing new innovations in floating offshore wind technology within the Marine Building on campus. Supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the project will upgrade the COAST (Coastal, Ocean and Sediment Transport) Laboratory, adding wind generation to the ocean basin’s current and wave technology. The combination of the three will create a first-of-its-kind facility in the UK and will enable researchers to improve their understanding of how future technology advances could be impacted by atmospheric conditions. It will also provide a low-risk environment in which researchers from academia and industry can test new and novel concepts.

Dr Martyn Hann, Lecturer in Coastal Engineering and Academic Lead within the COAST Laboratory, is principal investigator on the project. He said: “Floating offshore wind is an exciting sector that is likely to grow significantly over the next few years. But before any device goes into the sea, physical modelling is critical, especially during the early stages of developing a new concept. Testing model devices at scale in the controlled environment of a laboratory has many advantages and this investment gives us the capability to be at the forefront of such advances.”

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This much has been known since the 1980s – but after attending a service of commemoration, Dr Harry Bennett, Associate Professor of History, and an expert in maritime and military operations during World War Two, was contacted by the family of a serviceman and provided with transcripts of official records that shed new light on the incident. It revealed how a second convoy of Allied tank landing ships encountered the German S-boats, but were not attacked because they were preoccupied by British destroyers chasing them. Had they too been fired upon, it could have had a catastrophic impact on D-Day plans owing to loss of life, damage to morale and a lack of the highly specialised tank landing ships (LSTs) that were vital to the operation.

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New research has revealed that the course of history was close to being altered during a D-Day landing rehearsal that took a devastating turn. Exercise Tiger, which was staged in Lyme Bay in late April 1944, was intended to be a training exercise but ended in tragedy when the convoy of American ships was attacked by heavily armed German S-boats, resulting in the loss of 749 servicemen.

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The Big Interview Professor Daniel Martin OBE Described as a ‘daredevil of science’ for his astonishing exploits on Mount Everest, Professor Daniel Martin OBE is not your average academic. In his first interview since joining Plymouth from University College London, we find out how he’s been able to combine high-altitude research with intensive care medicine – and why everyone connected to the University should be excited by his arrival.

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Guest Feature

Opinion

Jane Wilson-Howarth

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Physician, author and zoologist Jane Wilson-Howarth reflects on her life and adventures with poo, puddles and parasites

United States?

What next for post-Trump America?

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Under the Microscope

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Student Story

Coast to coast

Academic journeys; personal reflections

Rip currents, storm chasing and beach erosion with a remarkable team of researchers

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In Conversation

Alumni Portrait Danny Cooke

Student start-ups

From Paignton to Pripyat: life through the lens of a remarkably talented filmmaker

Three remarkable new companies, founded by University graduates, reveal the challenges they’ve faced – and the success they’ve enjoyed

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The campus of the future

Brain Tumour Research

Feature

How the campus masterplan is reshaping the University’s estate and helping to regenerate the city

The latest developments from the BTR Centre of Excellence

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From Everest to Plymouth … it’s not your usual career journey. But then, as we are to discover, Dan Martin is anything but your average academic.

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Today, under heavy skies that constantly threaten a wintry soaking, the view is, understandably, less dramatic, but nevertheless full of its own symbolic landmarks. Surrounding us are the tors and trails that Dan’s stepfather walked as a Devon lad, nurturing a love of the outdoors that he would later imbue in his son. And to the south-west, bathed in the weak orange light from the setting sun, you can see Plymouth, home to the university that Dan joined in the spring of 2020 as its first Professor of Perioperative and Intensive Care Medicine.

“Walking and climbing has always been a big part of my life,” he says, balancing upon one of the many weathered granite blocks that angle up from the top of the tor. “And I’ve had the good fortune to be able to combine the two in a tangible way to undertake research that is impacting upon intensive care medicine.”

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Professor Daniel Martin OBE extends his arms in an L-shape to frame the dimensions of Mount Everest’s summit. “It’s not too dissimilar to this in terms of size,” he says, gesturing to our surroundings at the top of Cox Tor on Dartmoor. “It’s just an extraordinary, spiritual place, covered in prayer flags. And you get this astonishing view of the Himalayas, with Tibet on one side and Nepal on the other.”

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The backdrop to this record was the 2007 Xtreme Everest expedition – the first of Dan’s two research trips to the world’s tallest mountain, in partnership with a team of doctors, nurses and scientists who specialise in both climbing and physiology. The 250-strong, three-month mission sought to simulate the extreme conditions that intensive care patients endure and study the effects of oxygen deprivation on the body – known as hypoxia.

“When people go into intensive care, they are commonly suffering with low levels of oxygen in their blood,” he says. “Some can tolerate it, some can’t, but our understanding of it is very poor and there is still a great deal of uncertainty as to what oxygen levels you should set a patient when they are on a ventilator.”

Typically, Dan says, hospitals will try to elevate a patient’s oxygen levels by mechanically blowing it into their lungs with a ventilator. One of the aims of the Xtreme Everest project, which is based at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health (ISEH), has been to question whether that is always the best approach.

“Our method from the outset has been ‘Let’s look at ourselves rather than animal models’ and altitude seemed to be a place where you could really push people to the edge of their physiology,” Dan says.

“While it is not entirely the same as being on a hospital bed with multiple organ failure, people at altitude have very low oxygen levels, particularly if you push them with a bit of exercise and their cognition is altered due to the stressful environment.

“And we have found remarkable similarities in human cells in those two environments. We have learned things on the mountain which we have subsequently seen in patients.”

The ascent to the summit on that record-breaking trip began on the night of 22 May at the tail-end of the climbing season. By first light at around 4.30am, they found themselves on the precarious knife-edge of the south-east ridge of Everest in windy conditions – but mercifully, with the mountain to themselves. No queues, no waiting to climb over the Hillary Step, and no one to witness them dropping their trousers!

For, once they reached the summit two hours later, the ‘real work’ was due to begin – taking blood from one another in this oxygen-deprived environment. But the windy conditions meant they could not do the tests at the summit, so after a period of reflection among the prayer flags, they descended 400 metres to a more sheltered ridge.

“We put up a tent, removed our oxygen tanks for half an hour, and then did the tests,” Dan recalls. “We had to take the blood from the femoral artery and this presented us with something of a logistical challenge.

On an earlier climb of Cho Oyu (8,188 metres), we had experimented with these special suits that had flaps over the groin. But we couldn’t locate the anatomy very well and we ended up furtling around in these little holes saying, “I can’t see your groin!” We tried to take blood from the radial artery in the wrist but that proved too difficult due to the temperature. So on Everest, we simply had to resort to removing our trousers!”

Later, the team discovered that it was not only the trousers that had dropped to the floor. A healthy level of blood oxygen in an adult is typically 12-14 kilopascals. When the samples were analysed, they found that Dan’s measured just 2.55 kPa. “It is a very strange thing, having this record,” he says with a wry smile. “In meetings and conferences, when I tell them how low my oxygen levels were, there is this audible gasp. But at the time, I had been able to function relatively normally, take blood samples from my colleagues, talk on the radio and climb. But we just don’t see those levels of oxygen in patients in hospitals – they don’t exist.

“Of course, we had had the time to acclimatise, and this was part of our whole drive to do this research.

We weren’t trying to look how low I could get my oxygen; it was a demonstration that given time, some individuals can acclimatise to that very low level. And potentially that has implications for how we manage patients on ventilators.”

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“I hold the ‘record’ for the lowest level of oxygen ever recorded in the blood of a living human,” he says with a matter-of-factness befitting an academic tome (in this case The New England Journal of Medicine, in which the full scientific story was chronicled). “My blood-oxygen level was 80% lower than where it would normally be, and less than half of that which would trigger an urgent admission to intensive care.”

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Like Scott and Gagarin, Dan’s feat required elevation and cold temperatures. Unlike record-breaking speed merchants Stainforth and Stapp, it was anything but fast.

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Captain Robert Falcon Scott; George Hedley Stainforth; John Paul Stapp; Yuri Gagarin and Dan Martin – five men who, according to the BBC in 2012, were the five greatest daredevils to have advanced science.

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“Science was logical and explained the world around me, about how living things worked.”

Unlike that landmark occasion on Everest, there is barely a breath of wind on Cox Tor today. Walkers are out in abundance, with several stopping out of curiosity as photographer Lloyd Russell goes about his craft.

A head tilt to the horizon here, a gaze out across the landscape there; Dan’s easy compliance is of a man familiar with the lens of a camera.

His high-altitude exploits have resulted in regular appearances in radio and television documentaries, such as The Wonderful World of Blood, when he put Dr Michael Mosley in a hypoxic chamber at the ISEH and subjected him to oxygen deprivation. He was even a consultant on the BBC documentary How to Grow a Planet when Plymouth’s Professor Iain Stewart MBE was locked inside an airtight Perspex box with half the oxygen removed for 48 hours with only oxygenating plants for company.

When you factor in his considerable body of research published in high-impact journals, and the extensive number of prestigious honorary positions he holds, there is little argument that Dan Martin is a hugely significant ‘signing’ for both the University and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust. How, we ask, did Plymouth convince him to leave the capital, where he was a Professor in the Division of Surgery

and Interventional Science at University College London, and an Honorary Consultant in Perioperative and Critical Care Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital?

“Well, it probably began five years ago when I first met Professor Rob Sneyd,” he says, referring to the University’s inaugural Dean of the Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry. “Rob personally knew Mike Grocott, who led the Xtreme Everest expedition in 2007, and so he was familiar with our work. But it became more serious when I came down for Rob’s retirement event and he started to say, ‘You should come and work here – it’s the only obvious solution to your life!’ That’s where the idea was seeded.”

With the arrival of Professor Sube Banerjee as the new Dean when Rob retired in 2018, “the dream started to become a very real scenario”, and after some constructive discussions, the position of Professor of Perioperative and Intensive Care Medicine was created.

In May 2020, after more than a decade at UCL, and in the midst of lockdown, Dan officially became a member of the Faculty of Health.

“It was quite surreal – I couldn’t step foot in my office due to the lockdown,” he says. “Indeed, it was months later that I finally made it on to campus; it was certainly not the usual way to start a new chapter in your career.”

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One of Dan’s first actions upon being made a professor was to call his former science teacher, who had played a truly formative role in his academic direction.

By his own admission, Dan was not a particularly well-behaved pupil at the private school he attended in leafy Hampshire, courtesy of the assisted place scheme that enabled talented children from low income families to benefit from a more exclusive education.

Wrestling with a dyslexia that robbed him of any feel for languages, and an underlying unease at being surrounded by wealthy pupils, it was through science that he finally found some clarity in learning.

“Science was logical and explained the world around me, about how living things worked,” he says. “And there was this particularly inspiring teacher, Tim Dilks, who spent a lot of time with me, nurturing my interest in science and was one of the people who suggested I go to university. The expectation from my family was that I should follow the path of those generations before me and join the Navy. The whole concept of university was somewhat alien.

“But I applied for a degree in medicine because I was drawn to the opportunity to learn more about the human body. I can’t say I was one of those people who, at the age of four, wanted to be a doctor and save lives. It was the understanding rather than the healing that drew me.”

Eschewing the safe choice of neighbouring Southampton, Dan sought a degree of independence by enrolling at Leicester on a six-year course that included an intercalated Bachelor of Science. He enjoyed its modern approach to medicine, and it was here that he met the second major influence upon his career.

“It’s where I first discovered research, thanks to a project I did with a newly-appointed cardiologist,” he recalls. “It was his first consultant job and I was his first research student. He is now Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation. I still see him from time to time. Whenever I walk into the room he pats me on the back in a very fatherly way. It was a great year of research culminating in the publication of several scientific papers.”

After graduating, Dan worked at various East Midlands hospitals without settling upon a particular training programme. He briefly focused upon cardiology, before a move to the London Chest Hospital introduced him to the local anaesthetist community. As a scientist fascinated by physiology, the ‘exquisite nature’ of putting a patient to sleep and controlling that process appealed greatly to him. He applied for a training position, and with a PhD at UCL completed in the interim, Dan finally qualified in 2011.

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It was during those years of training that Dan also met his fellow co-founders of “I’m here to create a Xtreme Everest, who had first begun to study high-altitude physiology around the foundation so that Plymouth turn of the millennium. An avid climber will be a centre of excellence from an early age, particularly on trips to Wales with his stepfather, Dan needed no long after I am gone.” second invitation to join the group on a climb in the Lake District. It was there that they told him of their ideas about conducting That theme of securing a legacy for the future research in the Himalayas. is one, paradoxically, that is occupying Dan’s thoughts during the infancy of his role at “From there, it escalated rapidly with Plymouth. His remit is not simply to maintain exponential craziness,” says Dan. “Mike his prodigious level of work (though he is due Grocott was an inspirational, visionary person who could picture hundreds of people to begin the largest ever study of intensive care units in the country with the ICNARC walking up and down base camp, and he [Intensive Care National Audit and Research made it all happen. We attempted to climb Centre], and potentially 16,500 patients).

Baruntse in 2003, and then after our first 8,000-metre expedition to Cho Oyu in 2006, His primary concern, instead, is succession planning, and establishing a research base we moved on to Everest.” in the city that will become home to a multiFor the second Everest project in 2013, Dan disciplinary community of medics, allied was the overall lead, an experience that he health professionals, trainees and science rates as perhaps the proudest of his career. students, all working around common themes While the team never set out to reach the in perioperative and intensive care medicine summit, it did set its research sights much to tackle the big problems of the day. higher.

“At big research-intensive universities you “One of the questions we were repeatedly have this scenario of a successful professor asked after 2007 was, ‘What level of retiring, and the lab is cleared and the oxygen did you see when you looked at the next group moves in,” he says. “That’s a Sherpas?’” Dan says. “So it was obvious we very short-sighted way of running things. had to go back and do similar experiments I’m here to create a foundation so that comparing them with ourselves. It was Plymouth will be a centre of excellence long ethically and logistically complex, but we after I am gone. It already has the building found some exciting differences between the blocks it requires – the people I’ve met are two populations.” extraordinary – but it needs a leader and an enabler in my field, and that’s what I will try The expedition used 275 yaks to transport to be.”

15 tonnes of equipment, one tonne of dry ice and 160 litres of liquid nitrogen, along with That foundational process has already begun, 65 Sherpas and 80 members of the public. with Dan’s fiancée, Dr Helen McKenna, It provided so much data that the team is still also joining the University from UCL on an publishing their findings to this day. But by NIHR-funded academic clinical fellow post. that same token, Dan admits, a watershed “We essentially do the same thing … well moment for the group is drawing near. almost,” Dan clarifies with a smile. “Helen “There are five of us who run the show, is following a very similar track, but where which we have now formed into a charity.

I have drifted into these big clinical trials, We try to meet once a year, and this summer that is absolutely not her thing. Her real we acknowledged that we have some passion is in the laboratory – the biological, decisions to make as to whether we shut up molecular component of our work. shop or have some form of handing over “So my coming to Plymouth adds an to the next generation. I don’t think for a additional, complementary scientist – one moment that this will be our last trip to high who will ultimately bring far more to the altitude – and we are always formulating table than I do!” questions to answer – but it might be time to take a back seat and let the younger investigators lead.”

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The vanishing point on the horizon to the west is suddenly smeared across the middle distance by an ominous column of grey advancing upon us. It’s a sign from the weather gods that we’re pushing our luck with the moor.

Precisely how high Professor Dan Martin can climb on his quest to improve our understanding of intensive care medicine is yet to be written. What’s clear is that he’s not doing it alone.

“It’s a very natural thing to climb upwards – but it is un-natural to climb down.”

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“It’s a very natural thing to climb upwards – but it is un-natural to climb down,” Dan says as he carefully negotiates a section of potentially ankle spraining granite on our descent/retreat towards the sanctuary of the car park. “And that’s where so many climbers have historically run into trouble.”

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Not that Dan appears to be remotely concerned. When you’ve grown up sailing to France with your stepfather without even checking the forecast (and equipped with just a handful of francs), and when you’ve endured temperatures of -30°C on the Alaskan mountain of Denali (“The only time in my life where I was too cold to sleep”), you have a rather different perspective on the elements.

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DR DAVID BROCKINGTON, LECTURER IN POLITICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODS

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What next for post-Trump America?

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n January, following one of the most divisive elections in its history, Joe Biden became the 46th President of the United States of America.

For many reasons, it is tempting to see Biden’s victory as a return to normality for the United States: the grown-ups back in charge; Twitter diatribes replaced by good old-fashioned diplomacy.

But while there has undoubtedly been a sense of relief evident across the middle ground of politics at the Democrats regaining control of the nation’s narrative,

Perhaps the only unifying theme or philosophy that knit the actions of the Trump administration together (beyond sheer narcissism) was Trump’s antipathy to anything that Barack Obama had achieved.

Trump wasn’t so much a builder (witness the unbuilt but oftpromised wall along the border with Mexico) but a destroyer, and his success was in tearing down the achievements of his predecessors. This included international accords – most notably those relating to Iran, Cuba and the climate – bewildering long-time allies, and destabilising NATO. He turned

‘Trumpism’ is behind us. In both 2016 and 2020, we witnessed an effective status quo of voting patterns, with Republican identifiers supporting their party, and Democrats doing the same.

What Trump succeeded in doing, however, was tapping into and accidentally exploiting a set of beliefs that exist in the United States, and will continue to do so: a racial anxiety that white people will at some point in the near future no longer be an outright majority.

the other cheek to Russian interference and cybercrime, and did his best to ignore the threat posed by COVID-19, thus emboldening others to do the same at great cost.

Party into little more than a white ethno-nationalist cult. Consider, for example, the hundred or more Republican members of Congress who signed onto the quixotic attempt by the State of Texas to sue Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and convince the Supreme Court to

At its ugliest, this focus upon exploitation of base fears has turned elements of the Republican

Image: Joshua Crompton, BA (Hons) Illustration student

we write off the lessons of the past at our peril. The Trump presidency was no historical blip or far-right fever dream. In moving America forward, the Democrats will have to acknowledge and address some of the issues of the past and present.

But, it’s also important to note that Trump’s defeat does not mean

votes of ethnic minorities through various means, and when all else fails attempting to fundamentally delegitimise the process (and hence, the winners). In recent history, we have witnessed the entirely manufactured scandal around the Clintons in the early 1990s, called Whitewater; there was the so-called “birther” movement, propagated by Donald Trump himself, which claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not constitutionally allowed to be president (he was, of course, born in Hawaii after it had gained statehood); and now, with the fraudulently stolen election theory, the Republicans seek to hobble Joe Biden through the four years of his administration. The outcome is that a large segment of the American population are, and will remain, convinced that the election was stolen, and that Biden is an illegitimate president, like Obama before him.

‘one state, one vote’ basis, leading most probably to a Republican win. So, if all it takes is to target 44,000 votes, why alter the strategy for another generation or so?

While the Republicans appear uninterested in competing on ideas – they did not even bother to write a platform for 2020, the American equivalent of a manifesto – the institutional structure of American democracy still enables them to remain competitive. In seven of the past eight elections, the Republicans have lost the ‘popular vote’ – by seven million most recently. But presidents are not elected on

Who spearheads that Republican campaign in 2024 will not be clear for some time. Prior to the January insurrection at the Capitol Building, few would have discounted Trump from playing some form of leading role himself. But his culpability for the actions of the mob that day, his impeachment acquittal notwithstanding, have very likely turned his remaining political stock so toxic that not even the Republicans will countenance a second campaign for the White House. The evidence is there in the Senate vote; Trump is the only impeached president to have had even a single senator from his own party file a guilty vote, and seven did so in the second case.

So instead, we might well see the emergence of a new breed of candidate, one who might be termed ‘the thinking man’s Trump’.

They too will appeal to the same ethno-nationalism, the same thinlyveiled racism, the same misogyny, and the same belief in fighting against the liberals at all costs.

But they will do it in a way that is more polished and professional, and definitely more cunning.

Trump is a profoundly stupid man.

The next Republican candidate to tap into his support won’t be.

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this basis, requiring instead to triumph via the Electoral College system, whereby each state is allocated a certain number of votes. And the issue for the Democrats is that rural states such as Wyoming have comparatively greater representation than more populous ones like California.

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Trump is a profoundly stupid man.

The next This is the logical evolution of a Republican thread in American conservatism, which instead of trying to compete Had just 43,560 votes switched candidate to in the electoral marketplace from Biden to Trump in three states on the merits of their ideas, – Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia tap into his – the Electoral College would have focuses its energies upon gerrymandering outcomes to been tied at 269 –269, and the result support ensure that Democrats are not would have been decided by the won’t be. able to govern, suppressing the House of Representatives on a throw out their election results, solely because Trump did not win those states. Whether this was founded upon a principled belief of election fraud or a fear of the mob, it doesn’t bode well for American democracy.

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So much of what America does influences and impacts upon other major Western countries.

Those people who believe that multilateralism presents the best chance for us to tackle supranational issues such as the health of the planet will have despaired at the rhetoric of the past four years. It’s clear that Biden will take a more collaborative approach, and present a more statesman-like image to the world. Whether he – and the country – can emerge from the shadow of Trump is less clearly defined.

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I’ve been passionate about the natural world forever, so perhaps it was inevitable that I would study in Plymouth where it is so easy to get up close and friendly with the inhabitants of marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. Here, I indulged in every possible adventurous activity, including caving. I even served as a cave rescue warden, and in my third year, researched how microclimate within caves controls which animals can live where. Post graduation, with three others from Plymouth, I put together a plan to explore South Asian caves and their wildlife. During our six months away we discovered scientifically unknown invertebrate species, but more importantly, I met people ravaged by infectious disease.

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Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth (or Jane Wilson as she was then) graduated in Biological Sciences from Plymouth in 1975. Her books include accounts of zoological expeditions, a memoir looking at attitudes to disability and death in Nepal and England, and children’s adventure stories. She has also written three travel health guides and her updated bestseller How To Shit Around the World was republished in October 2020.

High up in hidden valleys beneath the Hindu Kush, I inadvertently began a hygiene promotion campaign, communicating the importance

Poo, puddles and parasites

Thus far I’ve lived in Asia for 14 years, nine of which have been in Nepal. During much of the last three years, I’ve volunteered with the charity PHASE, who employ paramedics to work alongside government health staff in

remote Himalayan villages. My first trip to meet PHASE clinicians involved an 80-mile, eight-hour, rough drive from Kathmandu, followed by a sweaty four-hour climb. Sometime after dark, the PHASE paramedic was called to see a young man who had slipped off the path and cracked the back of his head on a boulder. The skull felt boggysoft and, from what we could see with flickering torchlight, cerebrospinal fluid was leaking from an ear. This was serious.

He needed to be evacuated.

The injured man was pumped full of antibiotics and pain relief and strapped onto a stretcher.

Eight friends, four carrying and four resting, manoeuvred the casualty through the jungle in the dark. At one point, only two could carry the stretcher. The path narrowed to a notch carved out of the vertical mountainside less than two boot lengths wide.

There was a sheer 1,000-metre drop to the river below, which

Photo credit: Simon Howarth

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Further expeditions punctuated my studies and early medical career, but it wasn’t until I married an irrigation engineer that I went to live in Asia.

Here I worked on preventing disease through talking about poo: promoting good hygiene practices as part of water supply and sanitation projects. My ecological education that began in Plymouth proved useful: cutting disease transmission is a lot about life cycles, and like any good zoologist, I ended up looking in puddles (for mosquito larvae) and at poo (for parasites and pathogens).

In parts of rural Indonesia, people live in houses on stilts; cattle are kept underneath. Well-meaning health promoters, aiming to reduce diarrhoea, advised that people should corral cows away from living accommodation. This bit of ‘health education’ increased malaria cases locally. Health advisors hadn’t considered the whole picture. Local mosquitoes tend to hunt at ground level and bite the first blood-containing creature they find, be it cow, goat, rat or gecko. If there are no animals beneath the house though, mosquitoes will search up and feed on people: not ideal.

Such cases made me realise how important it is to understand the physical and cultural environment before offering advice.

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of wound care with locals who did not know about microbes.

I was astonished at how the sharing of information could improve villagers’ health so dramatically. I resolved to continue such work and, to cut a long story short, managed – through spinning travellers’ yarns at the interview – to secure a place at medical school.

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sparkled silver in the moonlight.

Once the men reached the dirt road running alongside the river, they flagged down a truck.

Eventually the casualty reached the main hospital in Kathmandu, where a neurosurgeon operated.

The patient recovered completely.

In the mountains, I found myself making some of the scariest clinical decisions of my life working with minimal resources where evacuation is difficult or impossible (depending on the season). Not evacuating could result in death, but if we did advise a patient to go to hospital unnecessarily, we could throw the family into debt for years. A trip to the capital costs. Accommodation and food are expensive and there is always the danger that the evacuee would end up having private care and paying dearly for this.

Photo credit: Simon Howarth

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Saraswati and I walked back to the road-head, pausing each time the girl had a contraction.

We were in time though. She climbed aboard the bus, which rattled and bumped for four hours along the dirt road to the nearest birthing centre. That night, with some assistance from an oxytocin drip, she delivered a healthy daughter.

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At another clinic, I awoke around dawn to someone hammering on the door. Night crickets were still calling. I made out the word birami – an ill person. Saraswati, the senior Auxiliary Nurse Midwife, gathered information from the man who’d woken us.

His daughter-in-law had been in labour for a long time. He was vague about how long. It was not for men to know about such ‘women’s stuff’. We put heads under taps and gathered together our medical kit and set off. Ahead, the Langtang Himalayan ranges glistened with pristine snow. The air was crisp and the pace of our walking made me pant. Beneath the rutted, pot-holed ‘road’, lush terraces led steeply down to the sapphire snake that was the Indravati River perhaps 800 metres below. After half an hour, our guide led us up through the terraces to a twostorey, mud-plastered house surrounded by verdant maize and growing potatoes. There was an inviting smell of wood smoke. I was nervous. I hadn’t delivered a baby for decades and obstetric problems have a habit of going horribly wrong terribly fast. As I took off my shoes and ducked inside, I registered moans coming from a dark corner of the big communal downstairs room. She sounded bad. Older female relatives cooking rice on a central open fire were repeatedly saying, ‘Why isn’t the baby coming out?’ Saraswati took charge, ordering all the males to leave while we assessed the situation.

The young woman – she was probably in her early teens – had been in labour for two nights.

It was her first pregnancy.

She was exhausted. The neck of the womb was still closed tight. The girl needed to be evacuated. One of the menfolk was dispatched ahead to stall the only bus of the day, which was due to leave at 8am. After some fettling, the mum-to-be,

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It has been great to see the improvements there have been in access to healthcare over the years I’ve been back and forward to Nepal. Traditionally, people feared that if a baby died inside the house, the spirit of the dead baby would kill future unborn children. Now, though, it is rare for women to labour alone in a cowshed. Increasingly, women give birth with an attendant auxiliary nurse midwife or in a birthing centre. And although it is still seen as an unclean time, fewer women are confined with the animals while they are menstruating. Happily, such unhelpful ideas have largely been put to bed by health education efforts. Progress is being made, but in Nepal as well as Britain, we continue the battle to get patients thinking about avoiding disease rather than looking for tonics and potions to mitigate it.

Photos top to bottom: Photo credit: Alexander Howarth Jane looking, in her words, “uncharacteristically serious”.

“Smoke? Me? Not really.” Sarmilla of PHASE discussing the causes of lung problems with a patient with chronic cough. (Wai Health Post, Bajura District, Nepal) Appropriate technology – matching a spot of blood to a colour chart to diagnose anaemia – note the flies! (Wai Health Post, Bajura District, Nepal)

Jane Wilson-Howarth’s author website is www.wilson-howarth.com

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“I had been denied my right to an education as a child, due to constantly being moved from foster home to foster home, such that I was never enrolled in any school for more than a few weeks at a time. I desperately wanted to go to school, but from the ages of 13 to 16 I never set foot inside one.

Instead, it was an endless procession of foster homes which felt like prisons.

foster brothers and sisters haven’t fared so well. Some of them have been in and out of prison continuously, and some are struggling to raise young families in debt, relying on state benefits and payday loans. With no role models, others have become trapped in abusive relationships. None of my foster siblings have got their GCSEs, and few of them work.

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“Going to university still sometimes seems too good to be true, because I was always made to feel like an inferior person in society, not good enough or normal enough to go to school, and not eligible to vote due to having no fixed abode.

“Attending university is about much more than getting a degree; it’s a chance to start a new life with good friends, a nice boyfriend with an ordinary family, and a new city to call home. I’ve voted for the first time here in Plymouth. Enrolling in higher education can be the most valuable thing in the world for a care leaver, and it was the best decision of my life.”

“Eventually, I decided to take control of my life and, as a young adult, enrolled at the local college to sit my GCSEs. From that moment onwards my life slowly changed for the better.

I completed my GCSEs and Level 3 diplomas at college before finally getting onto the foundation year at university.

“To begin with, it was difficult for me to cope with student life because I had never learned the social skills or life skills that people with typical upbringings take for granted.

“One of the reasons I chose Plymouth was because of the care leaver awards, which offered me financial help and support. We have a long way to go to give care leavers the same opportunities as other people, and the care leavers’ service and bursary are a step in the right direction. My (non-biological)

“HIGHER EDUCATION CAN BE THE MOST VALUABLE THING IN THE WORLD FOR A CARE LEAVER, AND IT WAS THE BEST DECISION OF MY LIFE.”

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“The social services that were responsible for me before I turned 16 completely disregarded me as soon as I turned 16.

Essentially, I was offered no support from that point onwards. I left my foster home and became a homeless ‘sofa-surfer’, moving around different people’s houses as this was all I knew.

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“One of my friends at university needed her parents to send her money for a filling when her tooth cracked. Another needed his parents to send him money to get the train to a placement interview. Most of my friends return to live with their parents during the holidays, where they don’t have to pay rent.

Care leavers and estranged students rarely have these safety nets to fall back on, and have to be fully self-reliant all year round.

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Coast to coast The University is respected around the world for its marine science and engineering research. From the deep oceans to the shoreline, and from ecosystems to renewable energy, the institution has been helping to shape public understanding of the blue environment in many different areas for several decades.

The Coastal Processes Research Group are acknowledged world leaders in their field, and responsible for a remarkable body of work focused upon the dynamic nature of our beaches.

The group has published several hundred research papers on coastal erosion, rip currents, beach morphology and the impact of winter storms upon our beaches and cliffs.

In the process, they have pioneered innovative measurement techniques in the field and helped to create technological solutions that are changing the way we monitor and predict the impact of these storms.

Professor Gerd Masselink has been a key member of the group for over 15 years.

We asked him to take us on a virtual field trip of their group’s work …

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Our coastline is the scene of some of the most energetic – even violent – conditions in the natural environment.

It acts as a natural barrier to the sea, but as we have seen in recent years (particularly here in South West England), it cannot always withstand the forces it faces. From huge amounts of sand being stripped from beaches and dunes to the rapid erosion of cliffs, we have recorded some unprecedented damage with practically all coastal communities to some degree affected by issues such as flooding and coastal retreat.

The winter storms of 2013–14, in particular, were a wake-up call for our coastal communities – and even those inland, when you consider that the damage to the railway line in Dawlish

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The impact can be devastating and profound. Many key businesses are located close to the coast – from nuclear power stations to surf clubs (not surprisingly both of which are very interested and involved with our work). It’s a situation exacerbated by the country’s propensity to erect new buildings and/or extensions in the coastal region, such as the 15,000 new houses that went up between 2005 and 2014 in coastal areas at significant risk of flooding and/or erosion.

‘Not fit for purpose’ was the stark assessment of the Committee on Climate Change when it examined the state of our current methods for protecting coastal communities.

That is one of the reasons why our work has gained increasing impetus over the years. We need to be able to understand coastal dynamics if we are to move from reactive protection measures to proactively future-proofing our coastline.

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caused services to be disrupted by two months, with an economic loss to the region estimated to be between £60 million and £1.2 billion.

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How many times have you heard that said before?! It’s a phrase with many connotations, but in simple, scientific terms, it translates to the UK having more than 19,000 miles of coastline.

We are surrounded on all sides by the ocean, and that is an interaction of great interest to coastal researchers.

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“Researchers and technicians who are united by a passion for, and a strong curiosity of, the coast”

The Coastal Processes Research Group The Coastal Processes Research Group was founded in 1994 as one of the first research groups in the University. Four of the founding members are still in the group: Professor Paul Russell, Dr Mark Davidson, Dr Tim O’Hare and Peter Ganderton. Today, it consists of 10–15 researchers and technicians who are united by a passion for, and a strong curiosity of, the coast. It has developed into an internationally recognised unit that specialises in both field studies and the numerical modelling and prediction of the behaviour of coastal and estuarine systems.

To help us do that, we work with both primary data which we collect ourselves, and secondary data, sourced from organisations such as the Plymouth Coastal Observatory – one of five such bodies that cover England. This includes data on waves, tides, wind, beach profiles and aerial photography – all available on the internet. But the rest we gather ourselves and that’s one of the things that has defined us in recent years.

So what do we do at the beach? Well, essentially, we survey it, meaning we take many measurements that enable us to create a detailed picture of what the beach

looks like, or, its topography. This survey work has changed over the years. Initially, we did it all on foot or using a quad bike. But increasingly we use drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which provide us with much better coverage and a similar accuracy. On foot and with a quad we can gather several thousand ‘points of data’ in a day, but from the air, that figure becomes hundreds of thousands. For the underwater part of the beach, we use a boat equipped with a singleor multi-beam echosounder, which provides us with bathymetric data.

If we combine the beach topography with the underwater bathymetry and repeat measurements over different periods, for example before and after a storm,

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we can apply what we call a ‘total sediment approach’.

It’s like counting every single sand grain, or pebble, in a coastal system and how it changes over time. We survey the dunes with the UAV, and the beach with the quad and on foot, while the boat does the underwater bit. We then merge these different survey data sets together to provide a complete digital elevation model.

By comparing the before and after model, we can then calculate the amount of sediment losses and gains, and the direction of transport – not a trivial task.

We also install specialist equipment in the surf zone, which provides us with some really rich data. This frame, for example, is loaded with over 100 individual sensors and meters that record the flow depth and

velocity, the turbulence intensity, the position of the sea bed and the amount of sand in the water. Our team will assemble the frame on the beach and position it around the low water mark. As the tide comes in, the waves begin to cover it and we can begin to see how the water and sediment move around in the surf and swash zone, and how that changes the beach.

Cameras and scanners are also key devices in our inventory as these can record data without getting in harm’s way. They are therefore ideal for monitoring extreme events. What is really important with coastal flooding is not just where the water level is but how high the waves run up and down the beach – what we call the ‘wave run-up’.

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Using the cameras and the scanner, we can plot both the wave height and how far they run up the beach. On Chesil Beach in Dorset, for example, we were recording six- to seven-metre waves, which are really big, and a run-up of 10–14 metres. This gives you a feeling of how wave action can be amplified, especially on steep gravel beaches. Especially in the South West, with its large storm waves and many steep gravel beaches, it is this energetic run-up action that generally results in coastal flooding.

One key development for the group over time has been the way we have taken to using a mobile field laboratory. So, rather than setting up the equipment and leaving, we can stay on site and monitor the data in real time.

And having some shelter is crucial because we can work some very long days … … and nights!

The other benefit to having a mobile laboratory is that it provides some form of refuge from the elements.

This is particularly important when we monitor the impacts of storms on our beaches – an aspect of our work that rapidly developed during 2013–14 when the country endured a series of winter storms that were the most energetic on record. We secured funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to investigate the impact on gravel beaches, looking at the likes of Loe Bar (near Porthleven), Westward Ho! and Slapton Sands. We also ran a separate project looking at the impact of storms on beaches close to nuclear power stations. The group had dedicated wave watchers who would be on high alert when a storm was forecast. They would monitor the conditions during the week and the group could then make an informed decision about whether the storm was worth ‘catching’. And when we made the call, it would mean jumping into the van and transporting all of the kit to the beach to begin the

set-up. We became known as ‘The Storm Chasers’, and our work attracted a significant degree of interest from the media. It’s physically demanding work, but being able to respond in this way has enabled us to gather some exceptional data. Our most recent ‘chase’ came in September 2019 when we monitored the remnants of Hurricane Lorenzo, a Category 5 storm, from the beach at Crantock, near Newquay.

Coastal research tends to focus on the more exciting aspects of coastal change, such as extreme erosion.

But the recovery of the coast from erosion is equally important, because if it cannot recover fully, it is vulnerable to subsequent storms. After the 2013–14 winter, we received emergency funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to investigate not only the impacts of the extreme

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Today, we face some harsh realities. Our climate is changing, and the resulting rise in sea level and potential increase in storminess is having significant coastal impacts. Over time, this will only get worse, and we, as a society, have some very difficult decisions to make. There are countless homes and businesses – like those in Torcross, near Slapton – that rely upon adaptation strategies, ranging from ‘hard’ protection, such as sea walls, or more sustainable solutions such as nourishing our beaches with sand and gravel from elsewhere. But as sea levels rise, so too does the cost to the public purse: it cannot hold back the rising sea forever. Coastal Change Management Areas (CCMAs) can play a key role here. The National Planning Policy Framework requires councils to identify CCMAs, which are coastal areas likely to be affected by erosion and

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Working in the coastal zone with colleagues and researching the process responsible for coastal change is immensely challenging and enjoyable. At the same time, it is hugely satisfying to be able to use our scientific knowledge of the coast to advise on the sustainable management of this key resource. We are an island nation and the coast is of great importance – environmentally, economically, socially and culturally.

Making the right decisions with regard to its present and future use requires robust understanding of the processes that drive coastal change. It has been our pleasure to contribute to this body of knowledge and understanding for the last 25 years.

“The research group will continue to play a key role in this field, mapping the terrain so we can better protect our coastlines now and for future generations.”

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It is imperative that we future proof our dynamic coast, and for that, we need to implement an appropriate buffer zone to inform coastal planning decisions. These buffer zones will need to be site-specific and science based. They will also require regular updating in light of new data, understanding and predictions of climate change and its consequences. That is why the Coastal Processes Research Group will continue to play a key role in this field, mapping the terrain so we can better protect our coastlines now and for future generations.

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flooding due to climate change over the next 100 years.

Residential development is ruled out in these exclusion zones, and so too is redevelopment or enlargement. We are working with several councils to help them with CCMAs – they are not straightforward to define, but they do represent a step in the right direction.

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storms, but also the post-storm recovery of the beaches.

We found that by 2016, beaches such as Perranporth in Cornwall had recovered just half of the sand lost in 2013–14. So one of the major themes behind our work since, and funded by yet another NERC grant, has been to understand and predict the rate of recovery and the role of subaerial and submerged sediment stores in the recovery process. We have based much of this work at Start Bay, in Devon, and Perranporth – which has been a great location for us over the years, dating back to when we studied rip currents with the RNLI around a decade ago.

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A shop door opens and a brilliant ray of sunlight kisses a glass sign, reflecting dazzlingly into the camera. A man sits at a desk intricately sketching a series of buildings, which cut and dissolve to evoke the passing of time. Viscous black ink is poured, creamy white paint swirled and gossamer delicate gold leaf applied to glass. A scalpel etches texture, and shavings take flight as a planer runs down a length of wood.

During the course of the two-minute film sequence, a portrait of the artist David A Smith MBE emerges, along with a celebration of supreme craftsmanship, both in front and behind the camera.

Its creator, filmmaker Danny Cooke, is today sitting in his makeshift studio in the living room of his home in Paignton.

He pulls a phone from his pocket and reads a message he’s recently received from the world-renowned sign-maker.

“Danny, man, the friends I’ve shown are so blown away. The funny thing is, everyone says how good the film is – but not my craftsmanship!”

Even through the desaturated gloom of our Zoom call, you can feel the warmth in the smile that appears on Danny’s face. Among the many films he’s made since he graduated with a First from the University’s Media Arts degree in 2013 – the commercial shoots for global brands and the award-winning creative portraits – this one really matters. This sequence may only be a sneak preview of what is to come, not even yet a trailer, but it’s nevertheless mesmerising.

“I started my filmmaking career by shooting a piece on David and that was my first-ever ‘Staff Pick’ on Vimeo,” he says. “We’ve shot several more since, but this latest film is our most ambitious.

For the past three years, I’ve followed the development of what might be his defining work. When it’s finished, I’m hoping it will not only be my finest work from a technical perspective, but it will have revisited and redefined those earlier films.”

Films on Smith may currently bookend Danny’s career, but there has been no shortage of interesting work in the middle. From his haunting Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl to his rich character studies (in collaboration with Amanda Bluglass) Ray: A Life Underwater and Viva. Punk, Rebel. 82, Danny has developed a reputation for making short-form films that capture both intimate detail and texture as well as panoramic scale.

“I aspire to people like Roger Deakins,” he says of the Oscar-winning Devon cinematographer. “You have the Hollywood style, which is very artificially lit. And then you have artists like Deakins who play with natural light and use lots of backlighting. Look at his latest work on ‘1917’, for example.

To create the natural look of a burning church they made a massive wall of lights of a similar height. They then used tungsten Fresnel lenses to create the sense of flame. A lot of my work takes visual cues from his.”

It’s a craft Danny has consciously striven to develop from the moment he enrolled at the University as a mature student more than a decade ago. Initially, having left school, he established himself as a freelance computer troubleshooter for a local store, visiting clients in their homes to fix their technical issues. But after seven years of ceaseless warfare on computer viruses, Danny was desperate for a new start, and so turned his sights to filmmaking, an art form that he’d experimented with as a teenager.

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“At school, I’d been involved in the machinima scene, which is where you use videogame graphics to create short films,” he recalls. “And around the time that I started looking at possible courses, I had just finished the first piece with David Smith.

I saw that Plymouth had a degree so I enrolled on the BA (Hons) Media Arts in 2010, and that was the start of a great time for me.

“During the first year, I slowly phased out my computer customers, so university was not just a learning period but a transitional one in my life. What was particularly great was that my lecturers saw that I was a very practical, skillsbased student, and they helped me to bolt-on the theoretical side. I gained experience in photography and sound design, and had the opportunity to consider why it is I do certain things – and that has been very important for my growth as a filmmaker.”

The University was also where Danny met Amanda Bluglass, an Associate Lecturer on the course and an award-winning freelance director and producer. Amanda was immediately impressed by Danny’s film on Smith and asked him to join her on the 2011 project, Ray: A Life Underwater.

Danny was director of photography and editor on the 14-minute film, which introduced the world to Ray Ives, a retired saturation diver, whose colourful life at sea is enshrined in his remarkable collection of historical artefacts – from World War Two ammunition to centuries-old coins.

“When I look at a project, I ask, ‘What are the ingredients I have to work with?’” Danny says.

“Recently I had to make a film on COVID and my ingredients were a terrible looking beige kitchen and some awful lighting – but you still have to find a way to bring that together to make something special. With Ray, he was such an amazing character that you’d have to be so careless to mess it up. Every moment was golden; it all had so much texture, so it was a great project to go into.”

The film won 18 international awards including Best Documentary at the Super Shorts International Film Festival in 2011, and Best Adventure Film at the 2012 San Francisco Ocean Film Festival. It cemented a partnership – and friendship – with Amanda that endures to this day.

Indeed, they have just completed a very different project during lockdown – an art installation at a renowned fish restaurant in Adelaide, Australia.

The pair ‘trawled’ through their archive of watery footage, including their film Beneath, shot with Olympic diver Tom Daley, to create an aquathemed artwork that would fit a challenging 10×1-metre screen.

“I’m in a good position where I do not need to actively look for work,” he says. “Most of what I do is repeat business that comes through my agent in London, my website, or through local companies. I like the local jobs, but there are not enough of them to sustain a business. So I look outside of Devon and have been fortunate to have had some memorable international experiences.”

Through such work, Danny has documented a broad spectrum of life. The manicured lawns of Wimbledon; vulnerable children at Plymouth Music Zone; Formula One cars in full throttle; Philippine families living in squalor; and supermodels sporting De Beers diamond rings.

His most memorable experience was undoubtedly in the Ukraine, when he was hired to film a ‘60 Minutes’ segment for CBS News at the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, for the 30th anniversary of the nuclear disaster.

“I was always fascinated by the tragedy because, as a family, we had been living in a part of Italy that was in the path of the fallout,” he says. “I was aged just one at the time, and when word came of an approaching dust storm, my parents rushed out to find canned milk at the supermarket.”

Accompanied by a guide, Danny was able to explore the iconic abandoned city of Pripyat and acquire a remarkable amount of footage, using drones to capture the full extent of how nature has reclaimed it in the absence of humans.

“There is this shot that I filmed with the drone that looks like you’re in a forest – and then it pans

Danny used the footage to create Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl (2014), a video that has now been viewed approximately 20 million times online. At one point, Danny was trending number one on Facebook, and his film has since been devoured and appropriated in countless other forms of media.

“Someone did a shot-for-shot comparison between the film and a level in the remake of the videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – and it was remarkably similar,” he says. “But the film’s success certainly helped the careers of all of us who were involved.”

For Danny, that career of his continues to develop and pose new questions and challenges. How, for example, does he continue to balance family life in South Devon with the need to travel in a world currently ribboned with restrictions? What audience is he aiming for with the David A Smith film, and who would be the best distributor? And how does he incorporate the latest trends into his work, such as the ultra-short content form popularised by social media?

“You always have to be open to change and to new influences and inspirations – and my work and my practice have clearly evolved over the decade,” he says, reflecting upon the issue. “But underneath, I’m still inspired by those elements of water, fire, or light, and their fluidity. Ultimately, it’s about searching for that balance amid the breaths and the beats of the film.” dannycooke.co.uk

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back to reveal it’s the main street,” he says. “We went into buildings, schools and hospitals with children’s masks all over the floor. You can feel the whisper of history – in fact, I had this serene sensation unlike anything I have ever known.”

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It speaks to the variety of work that Danny now undertakes, whether working as part of a crew on huge corporate shoots for the likes of Renault or Ralph Lauren, or running the show on local jobs for Paignton Zoo or the Cornish Pirates Rugby Club.

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The University has enjoyed a long-standing partnership with Santander, with significant financial support available to our students through Santander Universities Scholarships, awards and internships.

These are designed to open the Plymouth student experience to all – through travel, research and career development – as well as making a huge difference to young start-up businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs. We spoke to three start-ups about the support they have received, their experiences in establishing themselves in industry, and some of the lessons learned during their formative months.

Ginium (ginium.co.uk) was founded in June 2019 by Ben Parkes and George Journeaux and is based in the Formation Zone. MEng (Hons) Electrical and Electronic Engineering graduates Ben and George had originally set up Automated Sustainable Systems nine months earlier with two of their classmates. But when it became clear that their career paths were diverging, they renamed the company. The duo are specialists in ‘vertical’ and indoor farming, which are techniques seen as important future directions for food growers in terms of reducing costs and carbon, while creating seasonless yields. They have designed a ‘toolbox of technology’ to help people set up, manage and monitor a farm of any size as simply as possible.

Chisel Robotics (facebook.com/ ChiselRobotics) was founded in December 2018 by Diana Kviatkovskaja (BSc (Hons) Psychology) and Mayur Hulke (University of Bristol), with Bristol academic Dr Appolinaire Etoundi in the process of officially joining them this year.

Chisel Robotics is redefining the amputee’s experience with its state-of-the-art wearable device and an app that can be used with any prosthetic leg for lower limb amputees.

This can provide improved and targeted care to a lower limb amputee 24/7 in both indoor and outdoor environments.

This will eventually allow an amputee to have maximum control over his/her mobility.

Diana has recently been selected

by Innovate UK for its 2020–21 Young Innovators Award, and will receive business, networking and financial support.

HOW HAS SANTANDER HELPED THEM? • A Santander Graduate HOW HAS SANTANDER Entrepreneur Award of £2,000 • A Santander Acceleration HELPED THEM? • A Santander Graduate Award of £1,440 Entrepreneur Bursary of £2,000 • Semi-finalists in the 2020 Santander Universities Emerging • A Santander Acceleration Award of £1,250 Entrepreneurs Programme • A Santander Springboard • 1:1 support and workshops from both internal and external Award of £989 in August 2020 business support providers • 1:1 and workshop support

Robotriks Ltd (robotriks.co.uk) is a robotics R&D-focused company based in Cornwall, founded by Jake Shaw-Sutton and Khaian Marsh (both MEng (Hons) Robotics graduates) in January 2018. To date, Robotriks has undertaken 12 projects, ranging from breathing assists and care home companion robots, to agricultural platforms and specialist drones. The company ‘scales up’ its manpower according to the nature of the job, with two to ten people joining them when required.

Recently, they have been featured internationally for their work developing a ‘cutting-edge, lowcost lifeline for farmers’; a robotic platform called the ‘RTU’, which has been designed to aid farmers in light of the labour shortages that are currently plaguing the industry. This platform can assist in a wide range of tasks around the farm and has been designed and manufactured completely in-house.

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“The main objective of this project was to create a smart control system that would make these futuristic farms simple to set up, manage and maintain. We were given a budget of £1,000 and around eight months to get it working, ready for a showcase at the end of the academic year.”

The Agri-Tech plant factory on campus (top); and the Universal Gummi Gripper from Robotriks (bottom)

and robotics do not have to be so expensive. The barrier to entry is not the cost, but rather, the time and the specialist knowledge of the area. So, if someone had a problem that they wanted to solve, but they didn’t know where technology can be used, that is where I could come in. We could build a business that solved these issues for people at a fraction of the cost, while still being highly specialised for their use. And you never know, during that time, you may end up creating something that is widely desirable and usable, and it becomes a sustainable successful business!

Diana Kviatkovskaja (Chisel Robotics): I was just fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. Back in 2018, when I completed my Psychology degree, I was seeking something exciting in the area of AI and robotics. During a start-up networking event in Bristol, I met with the inventor Mayur Hulke (at the time studying Robotics Engineering in Bristol). He shared with me the challenges that lower limb amputees have, especially issues with prosthetic sockets fitting and continuous visits to clinics for adjustments. He was conducting research with Dr Appolinaire Etoundi at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (University of the West of England) into how to measure pressure inside the prosthetic socket. As Mayur had experience and skills in the area of electronics and software engineering, he was determined to take the next step and work on the project

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continue doing this professionally after graduation. We were making from scratch, for the cost of just a few pounds, electromechanical devices that you would often see online or elsewhere for sale for hundreds or thousands of pounds. It was during this period that I realised that electronics

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Q. WHERE DID THE IDEA FOR YOUR BUSINESS ORIGINATE? George Journeaux (Ginium): It started over coffee; we were coming to the end of our bachelors degree and four of us had formed a work group and were brainstorming ideas to get a head start on the industrial project we’d have to complete for our masters year.

Ben (Parkes) suggested we look into controlled environment agriculture as it’s an emerging field that’s in need of some interdisciplinary work between engineers and growers. After a few discussions with some academics at the University, we found that, to our surprise, the institution already had a vertical farm on campus – Agri-Tech’s Plant Factory Cornwall. We had a chance to look around the plant factory and speak to the research team, and we found that a significant amount of their day was spent taking measurements and collecting data. We also learnt that it was difficult for them to set up, manage and maintain the farm. So, we’d found our project: designing and building an automated, vertical, hydroponic growing environment – project ‘ecoGRO’.

The main objective of this project was to create a smart control system that would make these futuristic farms simple to set up, manage and maintain. We were given a budget of £1,000 and around eight months to get it working, ready for a showcase at the end of the academic year.

Jake Shaw-Sutton (Robotriks): The idea to create a company actually began while I was studying on the MEng (Hons) Robotics course at the University.

During the second year of the degree, we were designing and putting together so many different projects and prototypes that the idea formed to try and

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outside of the research area and so became involved with the start-up communities at the two universities in the city. So when I met Mayur at that event, I was excited to hear his vision, and I honestly wanted to help him accomplish his dreams.

A couple of months later, we registered the company and started working more intensively on building our brand, preparing for the pitching competitions, and creating connections that are essential for our business growth and development.

Q. HOW HAVE YOU FOUND THE PROCESS OF REALISING THAT IDEA? DK From the start, it was exciting as it was something new and undiscovered. With time, we were faced with the more complex reality of technology development and the commercialisation planning process. We invested our time in visiting the prosthetic clinic in Bristol, where we had an opportunity to speak to people with lower limb amputations and to better understand what tools and processes clinicians are using when developing a prosthetic leg.

GJ Difficult – but worth it. It’s certainly not easy to start a business, especially without much money or business experience. But when you get it right, it can be really rewarding.

JSS Turning the concept into reality has been a huge learning curve, but also in some regards, very easy to do. Setting up the company was easy, as has been the design and build of a project, as that runs in our veins and is what we are passionate about doing. The most difficult aspect is often the paperwork – not because it’s incredibly complicated, but because it can be very time consuming.

I would love nothing more than to just design and build things all day and continue that process. However, sometimes you must accept that you do have to sit down and justify and communicate everything that you have been working on or developing. If you take the time to do that part well, often it then means you can build even greater things in the future.

Q. WHAT HAVE BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES – AND YOUR MOST GRATIFYING SUCCESS? JSS Personally, I would say the biggest challenge has been time. If you are starting out with a new business, often you have no real financial security.

Having only just graduated, this was the boat we were in.

I would spend every spare moment I had working upon the business, trying to find the next opportunity. Unfortunately, unless you have big savings, or a generous investor, this is simply the commitment it Jake Shaw-Sutton with the RTU takes (or I should say, this is the commitment it has taken for myself). Time is the most valuable asset you will ever own and you “Time is the most need to make the most of what valuable asset you you have available. As for the most gratifying success? Every will ever own and now and then, when working you need to make on the projects we have under way, it hits me: this was an idea the most of what that started with a few friends; you have available.” one that, a few years later, has become a recognised brand Jake Shaw-Sutton name, developing technology and advancements that could change accessibility for whole sectors, improving people’s lives as a result; engaging in research projects we never thought we would be able to build, using tools and machines designed for specialist industries – all of which we have full control over in our own machine shops. What

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started as a silly dream became a reality, and we can guide where that leads. That is the most gratifying success to me, because picking any single R&D project is like picking children!

GJ The biggest challenges have been figuring out how to manage the business side of things. Like learning how to create a business plan and an investor deck, and how to do market research. And as engineers we can often get carried away with R&D, adding all of the latest technologies to a project or a product without considering what would actually be useful to a customer or what would provide a good balance of innovation and profitability.

Since finishing university, we’ve

been working hard to refine our products and services, enabling us to find our first customers. We are now in our first stage of alpha testing – we have a couple of local farms on board and are currently helping them to get growing.

DK There are so many challenges that it is hard to decide what is the most challenging! From the business growth perspective, I would say it is raising investment as we are still in the process of applying for grant funding. The most gratifying success was to be accepted for the SETsquared bursary programme and getting into the finals of the competitions, as well as investment events

such as SETsquared Grand Invest 2020, and the TATA Varsity Semi-Finals 2019. From the technical perspective, it was the moment when we developed the electronic circuit of the minimum viable product (MVP).

Q. HOW VALUABLE HAS THE SUPPORT BEEN FROM SANTANDER/THE UNIVERSITY? DK We are so grateful for all the support that we have received from Santander and the University. As with many other start-ups, financial investment has been the most challenging part. Through Santander, we had help to purchase a piece of the necessary equipment to set up a mini-office and engineering lab at

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home. Mayur is now able to work on electronic prototypes and print the casing for the wearable device. As you can imagine, during lockdown all the research laboratories were closed, and that was a challenge for our team to continue development work. Financial support also helped us to cover some of the business costs and attend a few hardware and software product development industrial training sessions, which genuinely enabled us to understand the future challenges in the area of the product regulations.

GJ The University’s business incubator, the Formation Zone (FZ), along with Santander UK Universities, awarded us with a grant and office space, enabling us to start working on the business full time. It has provided us with advice and support at many stages of our business development as well as some bursaries to get small things done, like the development of our website. FZ has also entered us into a couple of pitching competitions, which has been great for growing our networks and refining our pitch in front of real investors.

The University also awarded us with a research grant from the Seale-Hayne Educational Trust, which is allowing us to develop the second version of ecoGRO for research.

JSS The support from Santander and the University as a whole really has helped us to push and progress what we have been capable of achieving. The key thing has been connections.

No single person will know everything you will need to know, but by having those connections, the range of possibilities expands. Suddenly you hear of a new opportunity, or someone mentions a problem they’ve been having to which

Mayur Hulke, Dr Appolinaire Etoundi and Diana Kviatkovskaja with their prosthetic limb device

you have a solution. You can be the best engineer in the world, but networking should never be forgotten. There are a few people in particular who really have enabled the business to grow. Without their support, their knowledge, their enthusiasm and their advice, we wouldn’t have had any of the opportunities to develop or expand over the years.

Q. BEYOND THAT, HAS ANYTHING FROM YOUR DEGREE STOOD YOU IN GOOD STEAD DURING YOUR CAREER? JSS Everything! It seems silly to say, but almost every aspect of my degree I have found to have pulled upon at one point

or another. Simply having that time to focus on a subject and expand upon one’s knowledge and understanding is invaluable.

So too is having that time to get to know other people who share the same interests. The experience it has provided, I have been able to constantly draw upon and then use, but in widely different contexts.

DK Self-belief and compassion towards people. And research skills that I gained during my studies were valuable assets that enabled me to conduct market research analysis, which gave our business an understanding of where the prosthetic industry is headed.

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Q. WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS – AND YOUR MORE LONG-TERM AMBITIONS BEYOND THAT? GJ In the next 12 months, we’re hoping to have our first pilot farms up and running in the South West. From there, we’ll be looking for some investment to help scale-up our business and fully commercialise our products and services. We’re also looking to start some local projects here in Plymouth with some of the city’s key players, as part of the Fab City Global Initiative.

Plymouth is the first UK city to sign up to the initiative, pledging to “produce all that we consume by 2054” – an ambitious goal, but certainly a well-needed one.

JSS We have consistently tried to play the secure route with the business – always undertake projects that you know you can

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GJ I believe the engineering courses at Plymouth are some of the best – they give a much more hands-on approach, which is invaluable when looking to get your first job in an industry that invariably asks for prior experience. The masters also had some business focus too, with practical lessons on project management and intellectual property. All of this gave me a good foundation of skills to start a business. And the business support from the FZ and Santander has really built on that, giving me the skills and confidence to actually go out and do it.

journeys and paths you may never have considered, and the complete and don’t financially tie experience is truly invaluable. yourself to a position which, if all There’s amazing support fails or something goes wrong, available (which you should spells the end for the company. absolutely take and use), and it is We are now at an exciting turning a truly rewarding experience. You point. We have gone from a may have the greatest idea in the business that can build a single world, but you won’t know it until complex prototype to one that you commit a bit of time to it. can batch-produce products GJ You’re not alone. Be open to every day. We have a wealth of trying new things; be vulnerable successful projects to draw upon, and ask for help when you need and in these next 12 months we it; and most importantly, have are planning to start optimising honest conversations about your and utilising this technology business or idea with anyone and production capability. The and everyone. Soon enough long-term ambition is to build you’ll find yourself surrounded by more advanced and exciting people who are in the same boat projects, while being able to as you, or those who have been in fully design and mass-produce that boat and genuinely want to the more useful ones in-house. help you succeed. Networking is DK In the next 12 months, where the real business happens we aim to raise the first – whether critical or uplifting, investment and focus on other the conversations you have with funding opportunities such the people around you are all as Innovate UK grant funding. invaluable lessons that will help This will allow our team to you to shape your business and complete MVP development realise your goals. Your first ideas and start product trials. The are likely not the problem solvers next step would be attracting or money makers, so be resilient venture capital investors and keep shaping your ideas from and bringing our product to what you learn. And know your the UK and US markets. worth – don’t undersell yourself because you’ll quickly get tired Q. WHAT ADVICE WOULD of getting nothing back from the YOU GIVE TO A STUDENT OR time that you’re putting in. Time GRADUATE CONSIDERING is valuable, and if someone is A START-UP? paying you for something, it’s DK I’d give the same advice that likely because they don’t have I would give to myself if I had a the time to do it themselves. chance to go back to 2014 when That makes your time valuable to I started my degree. I would them, so be honest with yourself prioritise my mental health about what you need from giving and, most importantly, I would up some of your time for them. surround myself with more positive, supportive people who have a big vision and dreams in their lives and are kind and

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“I believe the engineering courses at Plymouth sincerely wish me to succeed.

JSS I would wholeheartedly are some of the best – they give a much more recommend setting up in At the end of the day, hands-on approach, which is invaluable when business. you have nothing to lose from it looking to get your first job in an industry that and there is a huge amount you can gain. At first it may seem invariably asks for prior experience.” difficult, but it can take you on

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THE CAMPUS OF THE FUTURE The University’s campus masterplan has mapped out an exciting new vision for how the institution’s estate will evolve over the next decade. In this feature, we take a look at three major projects, all at different stages of progress, which will significantly reshape the University and what it can offer its staff, students and wider community.

A NEW DAWN FOR ENGINEERING AND DESIGN The creation of a flagship new home for the University’s engineering and design communities is arguably the most transformative project in the masterplan. The Babbage Building is a striking new-build and refurbishment of the existing building of the same name, which will create more than 10,000m² of research and teaching space, housing some of the most technologically advanced equipment in the institution. And it’s also the first step in reshaping not just the western edge of the campus, but creating new green space right in its heart.

“It’s probably the most complex estates project the University has ever undertaken,” says Tim Brooksbank, Interim Director of Estates and Facilities. “We are taking the Babbage Building back to its structural frame, which presents a very different technical challenge. And much of the equipment needs to be coordinated around the structure – you can’t just wheel it through the door when it’s finished.

We have elements such as slotted bed-plates to accommodate heavy equipment and seismic testing, along with the sub-sonic wind tunnel that will be planned into the construction. So the facility has, to some extent, been shaped by the equipment it will house.”

Designed by international award-winning architectural practice Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, the building will be as sustainable as it is striking, with the project saving a significant amount of carbon thanks to its utilisation of the Babbage frame and its embodied carbon.

Once complete, it will become the new home of the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, and provide valuable additional space for the School of Art, Design and Architecture. “For centuries, engineers have been our key innovators, developing forwardthinking solutions to some of the planet’s biggest problems,” says Professor Deborah Greaves OBE FREng, Head of the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics.

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“But if we want them to continue on that path, we need to offer facilities that will enable them to harness the latest technologies and push their creative boundaries. This new building will provide that state-of-the-art setting to inspire the engineers of tomorrow, giving us the ultimate place to bring together students, academics and industry in an environment that not only benefits them but also society as a whole.”

“Plymouth is currently undergoing something of a creative revolution,” adds Professor Chris Bennewith, Head of the School of Art, Design and Architecture.

“It is bringing design and digital innovation to the fore and ensuring the city’s creative sector can realise its potential and offer new opportunities, spaces and skills. This new facility will enhance the University’s place at the forefront of that, and mean we can continue to attract and nurture the design stars of the future.”

The vision for the multimillionpound building has been developed by the project architects with University staff over the space of 12 months, as well as a virtual public consultation in July 2020, which further influenced its internal and external facilities and appearance.

Once the project is complete, the University will then move forward with demolishing the aged Brunel Building, opposite, to create an attractive open and green space that will extend right up to the library.

“It’ll provide an entirely new aspect as you look westwards from the centre of the campus,” says Adam Jones, Head of Capital Development. “And it will be linked into a wider public realm scheme that improves the route from the Railway Station, through Portland Villas and right across the campus to North Hill. So this is not simply the creation of an exciting new facility; it is the project that enables the transformation of the campus itself.”

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INTERCITY PLACE Towering over the railway station – and pretty much everything else in the Plymouth skyline – the 11-storey Intercity House is a landmark for those entering the city. Designed by Howard Cavanagh and Ian Campbell as part of the post-war civic plan, the building has been home to thousands of rail professionals since it opened in 1962.

Now, thanks to the University, it will become an iconic setting for generations of health professionals to learn and train for the future.

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for what is now called Intercity Place in August last year, and has commenced a planned 22-month project to reconfigure, refurbish and rejuvenate the building. In the process, it has capped a wider project by the city to transform and regenerate the entire area in and around the train station.

“It’s an iconic building and it’s unlikely that any developer other than the University could have taken on such a challenge,” says Adam Jones. “The University has been absolutely instrumental in the wider multimillion-pound regeneration of this part of the city, which includes concourse

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“The University has been absolutely instrumental in the wider multimillionpound regeneration of this part of the city.”

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improvements, a new multistorey car park, a hotel site, and a future plot earmarked for us. It will change the arrival experience of millions of passengers – and the first building they will see will be the University’s.”

The improvements to the facade of the building will be one of the most complicated aspects of the project, and will require it to be clad entirely in scaffolding to facilitate the work. A great deal of mechanical and electrical work is also needed to ensure the heating and cooling of the building is sustainable.

“We are taking a very ‘leaky’

1960s building and transforming its EPC rating, which is quite remarkable for a refurbishment of this size and era,” says Colin McBride, Capital Project Manager. “And a novel challenge is that we are working within a live railway environment, which requires approval from Network Rail, GWR, the Department for Transport and the Office of Rail and Road.”

The interior of the building has been stripped out, and the contractor will begin the process of adapting the rooms to meet the vision provided by Stride Treglown, the project architects,

and the Faculty of Health. This will include teaching and clinical skills space for nurses, midwives, paramedics, physiotherapists and other allied health professionals.

When it opens, Intercity Place will be home to inter-professional clinical skills facilities for the University’s Allied Health Professions and Nursing and Midwifery, as well as additional educational services.

Professor Sube Banerjee, Dean of the Faculty of Health, said: “We provide more healthcare professional graduates for the South West than any other higher education institution – and the redevelopment of Intercity Place will only strengthen our exceptional clinical and academic learning. With our medical facilities on the North campus, our nursing schools in Truro and Exeter, and Intercity Place transforming our city centre footprint, we have truly become a faculty for the region.”

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THE BRAIN RESEARCH & IMAGING CENTRE The development of the University’s ‘north campus’ – situated adjacent to the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust (UHPNT) – has been one of the main features of the wider estate in recent years.

Construction of the Derriford Research Facility, in particular, has enabled a critical mass of medical expertise to be co-

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located next to the region’s biggest primary care hospital, where many academics in the Faculty of Health also work as consultants. Those links between academia and frontline care – from ‘bench to bedside’ – have been further strengthened by the creation of the Brain Research & Imaging Centre (BRIC) on Plymouth Science Park.

A collaboration between the University, the research charity

DDRC Healthcare and UHPNT, BRIC transforms the facilities available to the Faculty of Health’s community of renowned researchers working in fields such as neurology, clinical psychology and cognition.

The two-storey facility has seven cutting-edge laboratories, and has been developed through an expansion and extension of the original DDRC Healthcare building – home to the city’s

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in health and disease. But with BRIC, we can now translate that into actual outcomes that promise to improve the lives of patients.”

At the heart of that promise is the MRI suite, boasting the most advanced 3-Tesla scanner in the South West. The scanner, which was lowered into the facility by crane in October, will be used to explore a variety of topics including how the human brain encodes socially relevant information to guide our decisions, and how the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain work together.

In addition to its research potential, BRIC will welcome its first postgraduate students in human neuroscience for teaching sessions in the new academic year. For the DDRC, BRIC will enable its team to advance their studies of the relationship between oxygen and the brain, which are at the forefront of hyperbaric medicine.

And for the UHPNT, the MRI scanner will not only facilitate increased collaborative research projects, but will be available for patients’ use.

“This a milestone development for the University, the city, and the region – the creation of the most advanced multi-modal neuroimaging facility in the South West,” adds Stephen.

“And it’s one that brings us closer to our city partners and our communities.”

“All three of these projects – BRIC, Intercity Place and the new Babbage Building – have sustainability at their heart,” finishes Tim Brooksbank. “By taking existing buildings and reworking them, we are making a significant saving on their carbon footprint, and that is something to be celebrated.”

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that enables our internationally excellent researchers to take their work to the ‘next level’.

We’ve always asked those important questions that draw upon our expertise from the single molecule to the whole human, exploring the basic mechanisms of cognition and behaviour and applying advanced computational methods to improve our understanding of the brain

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hyperbaric chamber and other labs dedicated to divingassociated diseases. The project, which was led by DDRC with University support, took a total of 23 months to complete and was finally finished in March.

“BRIC represents the culmination of a long journey for us,” says Stephen D Hall, Director of BRIC and Professor of Human Neuroimaging in the School of Psychology. “It’s a facility

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But the situation with brain tumours has not been so positive, with less than one in five patients surviving more than five years after their diagnosis. Partly this can be explained by the complexity of the field, which has to cover more than 120 different types of brain tumour.

But for a cancer that kills more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other form of the disease, it’s an anomaly that it receives just a fraction of the funding of other forms.

“Historically, brain tumour research has received just 1% of all cancer research funding in the UK,” says Professor Oliver Hanemann, Chair in Clinical Neurobiology in the Peninsula Medical School. “As a result, survival rates have barely changed for decades and progress is urgently required.

At present, the only treatment options for brain tumours are chemotherapy or invasive surgery. With ten people dying each day, we urgently need new treatments.”

for research – something that is widely used in studying other, better-funded, types of cancer.

Laurien said: “Traditionally, researchers have worked with 2D cells as a primary model.

Often, when we move through the research process, results change, because 2D cell cultures are only accurate to a certain extent.

Today, it’s possible to make 3D cell cultures in the laboratory. These behave much more like the cells in our bodies, and results are more accurate from the outset.”

“It’s a difficult task because, by their very nature, slow-growing brain tumours do not grow or replicate quickly,” adds Oliver. “They may contain only 5% stem cells, which can then be used by Laurien to grow more for use in research. Before the pandemic, she was experimenting with different ways to culture cells, but over the last few months, her job has become more challenging still. She relies on using samples of brain tumour cells that are kindly donated for research, and with fewer operations happening, there has not been so many samples available.”

“WITH TEN PEOPLE DYING EACH DAY, WE URGENTLY NEED NEW TREATMENTS.”

In an effort to redress the situation, three specialist centres of excellence were established with the charity Brain Tumour Research (BTR). Plymouth is one of them, with the team here specialising in slow-growing tumours, and asking the key questions of how they grow; why they become cancerous; and how to stop them.

Since its formation, the Plymouth team has grown from three researchers to 20 and moved into the brand new laboratories of the Derriford Research Facility. It costs on average £2,740 per day to fund those labs, and the team has been indebted to the many donations received from businesses, individuals and clubs, as well as from BTR. And it was those donations that enabled the University to fund a new PhD post in October 2019 – one that brought student Laurien van der Weijer to the city. Laurien is now working on a methodology to create 3D cell cultures

With neuroscientists, immunologists, clinicians and specialists all housed together at the Derriford Research Facility, there is a unique interdisciplinary approach at Plymouth’s BTR Centre of Excellence.

“In the past I have only ever worked in laboratories where everyone is working on similar research,” Laurien says. “Here, there are people working on completely different kinds of research, but we find we can help each other. When I’m stuck, there’s always someone to help me move forward.”

Donations of those vital cancer cells are now thankfully beginning to come in again, and Laurien has also been able to continue with other experiments that are part of her project.

And her presence is in itself a positive sign that the prognosis for brain tumour research is beginning to improve.

“I’m hugely encouraged when I see young, dedicated and talented researchers like Laurien choosing this field of research,” adds Oliver. “It means a great deal especially when you consider that, for too long, brain tumour research was critically underfunded.”

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“HISTORICALLY, BRAIN TUMOUR RESEARCH HAS RECEIVED JUST 1% OF ALL CANCER RESEARCH FUNDING IN THE UK.”

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VIRTUAL LABORATORY TOURS The pandemic has also prevented the team from hosting tours of the Derriford Research Facility, which it arranges for those sponsors who have raised enough money to fund a day of work. However, a collaboration with Milton Keynes-based company Visual Realms Ltd has enabled them to create what is believed to be the first 3D, 360° virtual brain tumour research lab tour in the UK. The virtual lab tour opens up the experience to potential supporters and organisations for whom long distance travel is prohibitive. It also provides an educational opportunity for schools, and the children of supporters under the age of 16, that are unable to visit the charity’s centres of excellence on the grounds of health and safety.

“This is a special lab tour that lets you explore the lab virtually,” says BTR’s Digital Marketing Manager, Rachael White. “The viewer is in control and can find out more about different areas in the lab, what individual scientists are focusing on and the pieces of research equipment necessary to conduct cutting-edge research, as they navigate their way around the lab using their mouse.” braintumourresearch.org/research/university-of-plymouth-virtual-lab-tour

Meet Laurien, one of the University of Plymouth’s brain tumour research team. Her PhD has been fully funded by donations from people like you.

With your support, Laurien and the research team can continue work to find groundbreaking treatments for brain tumours.

Fewer than one in five patients survive more than five years after a brain tumour diagnosis.

A gift left in your Will could help fund the cure.

Learn more about leaving a gift to brain tumour research:  plymouth.ac.uk/1862-society  +44 (0)1752 588000

 giving@plymouth.ac.uk