Pangaea Advisories

21/10/2012

Glasgow University

Glasgow, established 560 years ago, is Scotland's second oldest university, the UK's fourth oldest, and an important pillar of Scotland's biggest city. As well as excellent teaching and a worldwide reputation, students enjoy a compact campus at the heart of the city's stylish West End. A flexible system of study means that those who aren't studying for a professional degree can make the final decision about their honours subject/s at the end of the second year. There's an unusually high proportion of local students: almost half come from west Scotland. Among the rest are representatives of 126 other countries. Glasgow is a confident and dynamic city that has reinvented itself in recent years. In 2009 it was named the UK's first Unesco City of Music, and it will host the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Facilities for shopping, entertainment and cultural pursuits are excellent, and there is dramatic countryside nearby.

Fees
Tuition fees for English, Welsh and Northern Irish domiciled students are £6,750 in 2012-13 (£9,000 for dentistry, medicine and veterinary medicine). Tuition fee discounts of up to £2,000 a year are available to students from low-income backgrounds. For more information, click here.

Scottish and EU domiciled students are eligible to have their fees paid by the Student Awards Agency Scotland.

Bursaries/Scholarships
The university's access scholarships and talent scholarships of £1,000 for each year of study are available to well-qualified students from low-income backgrounds.



Accommodation
The university has approximately 3,500 residential spaces for students. All students who have firmly accepted an unconditional offer or met the conditions of a conditional offer and have submitted an application for residence before 22 August are guaranteed accommodation. This means that most first-years live in university accommodation; a wide range, at varying costs, is available.

Facilities
The impressive library has more than 2.5m items on 12 floors and long opening hours (7.15am-2am daily). The Fraser building, a multimillion-pound development, provides an integrated approach to student services. Excellent sports facilities, too.

Transport
Travel within Glasgow is made easy by an underground system that connects the university to the city centre in about 10 minutes. As well as bus and overground train services, two train stations and good road links, there are also two airports nearby.


Contact: 022 - 40142952
email : [email protected]

18/10/2012

Cardiff University

Cardiff seems to have it all: grand civic architecture in a breezy waterside location, super-smart city bars and venues just a short hop from lovely countryside. The university is as confident and forward-looking as the city it's located in, and has an excellent reputation for the quality of its teaching and research. Almost 60% of its research is ranked as world-leading and it is a member of the Russell group of leading research universities. There are more than 28,000 students, including more than 3,000 from over 100 countries outside the UK, helping to create a vibrant, cosmopolitan community.

The graduate employment record is strong, with about 94% of Cardiff graduates entering employment or professional training/postgraduate study shortly after graduating. The university has approximately 300 undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses that are accredited by more than 50 professional bodies.

Fees
£9,000 for full-time undergraduates in 2012-13.

Bursaries/Scholarships
If your household income is below £30,000, the university will top up the total amount of money you receive from the government (that is your student loan and maintenance grant) to £7,500. If your household income is between £30,001 and £42,600, the university will top the total amount to £6,750.

Cardiff also has a range of scholarships. For further information, see cardiff.ac.uk/for/prospective/ug/scholarships.

Accommodation
A place in one of the university's 5,300 single study bedrooms is guaranteed to all first-year undergraduates applying through the normal Ucas admissions cycle. Prices range from £65 to £91 a week.

Facilities
Recently completed developments include a new flagship £18m health education centre; the Cochrane building, which provides teaching and learning facilities for all healthcare schools based on the Heath Park campus; a new student lecture theatre and teaching complex; and a £4m extension to the university's School of Biosciences. There is a state-of-the-art trading room at Cardiff Business School and an engineering forum at the School of Engineering.

The university's 17 libraries contain more than 1.3m books and 16,000 printed and electronic journals. There are computer rooms with 24/7 access and more than 1,300 wireless access points across campus. The student union boasts a 1,500-capacity concert hall and nearly 60 athletics clubs. Facilities include a sports centre, a fitness centre with a gym and six squash courts, 33 acres of grass pitches and four county-standard cricket wickets.

Work has begun on a new campus for research – Maindy Park – which is part of the Campus Horizons programme. The £30m Hadyn Ellis building will house highly advanced facilities for some of the university's world-leading interdisciplinary scientific teams.

Transport
There are regular bus services between both campuses throughout the day from the main Cardiff central station. Good for road and rail; London is two hours by train, Manchester three. Closer in, Swansea takes 40 minutes and Bristol 45 minutes.

18/10/2012

University of Manchester

Manchester is massive: almost 30,000 undergraduates and 10,000 staff make it the biggest university in the UK (bar the Open University). And it's number one for graduate recruitment, according to High Fliers research from January 2012. Manchester's continuing success is due in part to the positive experience that graduates report. The city is also a big draw - down-to-earth and friendly, but increasingly hip and happening. Shopping and bar-hopping are practically compulsory here and there are plenty of venues for both. Even just for an amble around, you can enjoy the epic architecture of the city's industrial past and vibrant present; it's all a short walk from the university.

The university currently boasts no fewer than four Nobel laureates - more than any other university in the country.

Fees
£9,000 for full-time undergraduates in 2012-13. For the latest information, visit manchester.ac.uk/undergraduate/studentfinance/home-eu-2012/fees/

Bursaries
Details on bursaries/scholarships can be found at manchester.ac.uk/undergraduate/studentfinance/home-eu-2012/university-scholarships-and-bursaries/g.

Accommodation
All first-year undergraduates are guaranteed a place in university accommodation, provided they apply before the deadline. The university has the largest number of places in university-owned accommodation in the UK, with more than 9,000 places in halls of residence. Prices range from about £78 a week for a single, self-catered room to about £130 for a catered, single en suite room. Most rooms have internet access.

Facilities
You've got access to one of the UK's largest academic libraries, more than 10,000 PCs across campus, e-learning facilities, and excellent teaching resources for both arts and sciences.

The new £30m Learning Commons building, which aims to provide a world-class 21st-century learning environment for students, open its doors this summer. Sustainability will be a major feature of the new building, which will include energy efficiency measures such as lighting sensitive to natural lighting and occupancy, CO2 monitoring to minimize energy wastage.

Transport
There are two mainline stations, an international airport and good motorway connections.


Contact: 022 - 40142952
email : [email protected]

16/10/2012

By Jason Oxenbridge

WORLD class research facilities are now virtually on Griffith’s doorstep following a joint laboratory agreement signed in Beijing by Vice Chancellor Professor Ian O’Connor.

Griffith University has committed $750,000 over the next five years to the project, which will enable the sharing of new research ideas, increase access to broad expertise and allow it tap world-class facilities that are unavailable in Australia.

Research Development Officer Vanessa Lao from the Griffith University Office for Research, said the Memorandum of Understanding is a significant development in Griffith’s efforts to expand international research collaborations.

“It’s a new model in terms of establishing a multifaceted and long-term partnership with multiple partners in China to advance cooperation and training in energy and environment materials research, where there are real cash commitments from each party,” she said.

“Already, the initiative is in operation with exchanges of postdocs happening across institutions.”

As part of the agreement, Griffith will host the first international conference under the agreement at the Gold Coast in February 2013.

The multi-lateral research co-operation MoU was signed with four key parties, including the largest university in China, Jilin University, which has 100,000 students. The Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and South China University of Technology (SCUT) are also partners.

Professor Huijun Zhao and Associate Professor Xiangdong Yao are leading the collaboration from Griffith with discussions now underway on prospective joint projects .

“SCUT has advanced facilities required for research and development in hydrogen storage and lithium batteries and in particular it has developed strong collaborations with industries for commercialisation,” said Professor Zhao.

“Overall, all the key chief investigators of this joint centre will build up the research strengths together, through effective collaborations, to solve some key problems of human currently facing in energy and environment.

“A lead researcher from Jilin Uni is a world leading scientist in porous organic frameworks for gas adsorption, especially for CO2 capture and has also commercialised his technology with Chinese industries.

“Associate Professor Yao from Griffith is working on hydrogen storage, high surface materials for gas adsorption and catalysts design. Materials research for energy such as photocatalysts, batteries and catalysis for fuel cells will also be researched.”

Clean energy and sustainable environment have been the top priorities of the Chinese government’s economic development policy as reflected in the nation’s 11th and 12th, 5-Year Strategic Development Plans.

The government has sharply increased research funding devoted to the development of advanced materials for energy and environmental technologies.

Ms Lao said these advanced materials played an irreplaceable role because any technological solution to the clean energy and sustainable environment problems would heavily rely on the development of new advanced materials.

After more than a decade of heavy investment and consistent effort, China has now become one of the leading nations in these research fields.


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31/08/2012