I know you share my determination that that will be dovetailed with the opportunities we have in the future, to maintain us as a leading institution in Scotland and Britain. Things at the University are going very well, and I repeat that I am proud of the success of colleagues in all the faculties. A Complete Catalogue of Paintings was described recently in the Telegraph as 'the art history publishing event of the year'. You all know how successful we have been attracting undergraduates to the University this year, largely because of staff involvement and things like our Open Day. Applications for next year, at this early state, look promising.
Few weeks go by without our getting some new distinction.
Next month I will be in London with a group of students and staff to accept the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for our MRI work in Biomedical Physics. We are the only Scottish University to have such an award. Just before Christmas, we broke ground for the second phase of IMS, and heard a couple of weeks later that the Funding Council are go give us 2.5 million towards it, out of a 3 million fund for all of Scotland. Although we still have a lot of work to do in recruiting mid-year students to Masters courses, we have done remarkably well in the European Social Fund Competition, bringing in 2.5 million over the next three years, which will help to replace our shortfall in attracting graduate students last September. We have also attracted from NERC twelve studentships for five years for M.Res.