Funding awarded

Professor Chris Gilligan and Dr Doug Bailey have won funding of £470,000 from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to examine the epidemiology of Rhizoctonia diseases in field vegetable crops. The three-year project, combining experimentation with mathematical modelling, will provide a strategic model to evaluate control strategies and disease risk. Aimed at optimising disease control, the award acknowledges the potential for direct application of the group's work in the area of sustainable agriculture.

Eddie returns

Eddie Elmer, Stores Assistant, has returned from an epic 987-mile cycle tour the length of Britain. Eddie, 58, raised funds for Green Hedges School in Stapleford by cycling - with no motorised support team - from Land's End to John O'Groats. The school caters for 66 pupils aged between 2 and 19 with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties - many of them autistic. Despite the odd breakdown and puncture, and driving rain in the mountainous Scottish legs of the trip, Eddie survived the two-week journey unscathed and in good spirits. The Department and its members have so far donated £400 in sponsorship.

CAM magazine goes green

This Term's issue of CAM, the University magazine, focuses on plants - the emergence of the study of botany in Cambridge, the research currently undertaken by this and other Cambridge departments at the Botanic Garden, and the plans for the Education and Interpretation Centre there. CAM is free to Cambridge alumni. Copies are available in the Department library or online here.

Science as art

Andrew Baker, graduate student in the Signal Transduction group, has won a competition for the best scientific image, judged on aesthetic merits. The competition was open to any student in the Graduate School of Biological, Medical and Veterinary Sciences, and was judged by Duncan Robinson, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Tim Hunt, joint winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Andrew's image shows the cotyledon - the seed-leaf - of Arabidopsis.
View a larger version of the image.

Department secures funding for reaching out to schools

School pupils should learn a little more about the excitement and importance of studying plants following the award to the Department of £100,000 over three years for a schools education programme. The award, made under HEFCE's Widening Participation initiatives, enables the Department, in collaboration with Science and Plants for Schools, to encourage applications to universities from pupils who would otherwise be unlikely to consider tertiary education. The project will be led by Dr Leighton Dann, formerly a teacher at Roundwood Park School, Hertfordshire, and recently a SAPS Schoolteacher-Fellow at Robinson College, where he advised the Colleges on admissions policy and developed molecular biology techniques which could be applied in school laboratories.

Changes in the Herbarium

Gina Murrell has been upgraded to the post of Assistant Curator of the Herbarium with effect from 1 January 2002. This well-deserved promotion is an appropriate acknowledgement of Gina's deep knowledge of the collection and her commitment to it over many years.

Following a change in the Statutes and Ordinances Professor John Parker has officially been appointed as Curator of the Herbarium for a period of five years from 1 October 2001.