Keynote 2 | Sionade Robinson & Concluding Remarks
Speakers: Sarah Ireland, Chief Executive, Royal Borough Kingston upon Thames | Sionade Robinson, Vice President of Enterprise, Engagement and Employability, City St George’s University of London | Paul Kirkbright, Head of Knowledge Exchange and Partnerships, South London Partnership & BIG South London | Angela Flaherty, Director of Strategy and Development, NHS South West London, South West London Integrated Care System | Matthew Hamilton, Director, South London Partnership
Sarah Ireland, Chief Executive, Royal Borough Kingston upon Thames
On the 1st of August this year, City, University of London and St George’s, University of London merged to become City St George’s, University of London. The merger marks an important milestone in both institutions, bringing together each of their strengths to form one world-class university with St George’s reputation as a world-leading specialist house University and cities excellence in a range of disciplines, including health, business, law, creativity and communications.
The merger created opportunities to generate significant innovation and change in health and care. Without question, the combined institutes constitute a new health powerhouse in the capital for the benefit of students, researchers, the NHS and communities, one of the largest higher education destinations for London students, and a powerful multifactor Institute with a distinct focus on professional education and research at the frontier of clinical practice.
This is why I am delighted to welcome Sionade Robinson, who is the Vice President of Enterprise, Engagement and Employability at City St George’s University of London, to address us today to close the Summit.
Dr Robinson herself is an alumna of City University and formally joined the University in 2010. Prior to her academic career, Sionade worked for many years as a management consultant, beginning with the Boston-based consultancy, Forum Corporation, and working for clients such as British Airways, the BBC and BP, before founding her firm, which advised a diverse leadership client list, including Barclays, HP, Virgin Atlantic, Aviva, and RAC.
During her time at City, Sionade led their Global Rank MBA program as Associate Dean and developed a range of marketing, consulting and leadership courses on MBA, MSc and undergraduate programs for executive education.
Sionade’s diverse research interests range from historical counts of expeditions to interviews with contemporary explorers of many kinds, and she certainly practices what she researches as in recent years, she gathered students, alumni and colleagues on an exhibition, trekked into a lost city deep in the Columbian jungle, climbed mountains and camped at 20 degrees below in the Arctic Circle. It is no surprise that Sionade is affiliated with both the Centre for Innovation and Disruption, and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
In January 2020, Sionade was appointed to the role of Associate Dean of People and Culture, to increase focus on equality, diversity and inclusion within the University, and she took up her latest position as Vice President of Enterprise, Employment and Engagement in August of this year. I’m delighted to welcome Sionade to today’s Summit to hear her perspectives. Please welcome her.
Sionade Robinson, Vice President of Enterprise, Engagement and Employability, City St George’s University of London
What a fantastically comprehensive introduction. That was wonderful. Thank you so much for doing your homework in such an incredibly positive way. So I appreciate that and thank you for introducing me and my role, and it’s a real pleasure for me to be here.
I have to admit, it’s the second conference I’ve been to this week. On Monday, I was at the CBI conference among the business community and the policy wonks listening to big biscuits complain about the declining attractiveness of investing in the UK. There’s another panellist who commentators said was wearing a shirt better suited to the Bournemouth disco, who disclosed that the public was just not convinced about Net Zero. And finally, Rupert Soames, the chair of the CBI in a green tank top, quoted his grandfather on free enterprise. It’s been quite widely reported in the press, suggesting that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is treating business like a cow to be milked. I must admit it was something like a cross between a cocktail party and a funeral. So I’m pleased to be here today, thank you for inviting me.
But what was abundantly clear at that conference on Monday was that it’s down to innovation, to inventors, to business and to enterprise, to address the great challenges that we face and that health in the workforce, in the lab, in the application of our research and technology is fundamental to the future success of this country. As a contributor to the global economy, life sciences and health are a competitive advantage for UK PLC, and we’re all counting on you. So it’s even more important to be convening this community to talk about health today.
What I’d like to do is introduce you to the newest and simultaneously one of the oldest universities in London, City St George’s. I’d like to tell you a bit about, firstly, how we support employability and skills at the university to assure you that if you’re taking on graduate talent we make sure that our graduates are work-ready. I’d also like to share with you some of the health innovation work that we do today and explain how it complements the existing strategic gains within the London Growth Plan and the South London Growth Plan. And I’m very happy to take some questions afterwards. Please find me on LinkedIn if you’d like to talk more personally and follow up and just make contact. I’d love to hear from you.
Let me begin by telling you a little bit more about our University. On August 1st 2024, City and St George’s merged, and this was one of the first major mergers in the university sector for the last 20 years, we are the University of Business Practice and the Professions, and we educate more than 27,000 students from over 150 countries at our three campuses in Clerkenwell, Moorgate and Tooting.
We are one of the largest health education destinations, and our academic range is broad, with world-leading strengths in Business, Law, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, Social Sciences and the Arts, including Journalism, and just about anyone you see on the BBC or in any of the media companies has passed through our School of Journalism. And of course, we have a fantastic health and medical science reputation.
We are very highly ranked for our student employability and the impact of our research, which spans identifying heart conditions in athletes, the prevention of food allergies in infancy, reducing violence against women and girls, economic policies against human smuggling, and how the food system works in practice. Our students are at the heart of everything we do, we’re committed to supporting them to go out and get great jobs.
We leave London in social mobility, which is part of the DNA of both City and St George’s, and like many, including our hosts at LSBU, is something that we feel very proud about as Londoners. City St George’s is now one of the biggest suppliers of the health workforce in London. We educate a comprehensive range of healthcare professionals, from paramedics through to optometrists, educated doctors, paramedics, physician associates, biomedical scientists, radiotherapists, radiographers, and occupational therapists and this complemented our work in health, including nursing, midwifery, speech and language therapy, optometry, counselling, radiography and psychology. So we are now uniquely positioned to influence population health outcomes and shape that strategic health workforce at a national and global level through the integrated professional education and the translation-oriented research we do with now many more interdisciplinary opportunities across our six schools.
We are playing a key part in resolving one of the greatest societal issues of the day, the training and developing of the workers and leaders for the NHS and healthcare professions that we so desperately need. We aspire to be the best place to be a clinical educator and researcher. We are offering more than 200 career-focused degrees, and the key part of our strategy is to focus on employability and supporting our students to get into the workforce. I know that’s a really important part, as we heard it discussed in the panel that just took place.
At City St George’s, we take students’ employability seriously, and we embed two things which are critical into the curriculum so they become compulsory. That is making sure our students think about their careers and their future, and they leave university with a plan. That’s a critical factor in actually being able to achieve graduate-level jobs, and they also are able within the curriculum to get professional experience.
So those two factors are the most reliable predictors of students being able to achieve their career outcomes. We embed them into our curriculum. We don’t leave it to chance of whether a student has the time to be able to do these things off the curriculum. Lots of our students are working part-time, so they don’t necessarily have spare time to pursue internships, options, clubs and societies in the way that some of us, perhaps, think that’s what happens at the university.
We have initiatives like we use technology to help students who are applying to us to think about their future careers and give them a real head start in getting that plan together before they even join us. So career-focused education and leaving university with a plan is really important to us. We have what we call our career activation program, which does these two things, career-focused education and professional experience in every single undergraduate degree that we offer. We’re one of the very few universities in the UK to offer that kind of support at the undergraduate level, and that makes our students unique and increases the chances of them standing out in that competitive job market. So that’s two examples. I’ve talked about how we support our student talent.
Now I’d like to talk about how we can support future health and work with communities and groups such as yourselves. Health innovation is a central part of our work as a university, echoed in your growth plans, and a key part of what’s brought everyone here today. Our Health Innovation Nexus was launched in September and supports the development of partnerships between our academic community and SMEs working in the health and MedTech space. These partnerships are established with a mutual aim of developing impactful and life-changing health innovations, the kinds of innovations that make a huge difference and that inspire many of the people I’ve seen and met and heard from today.
I love a quotation from Arthur C Clarke. I’m sure you’ve heard it. ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ I don’t know if you’ve heard that before, but I love it, there’s magic happening at City St George’s and here in South London. Now I’ll give you an example I heard recently about genetically modified tobacco plants that yield cancer-fighting compounds. Can you guess how such compounds might be delivered medically to patients? By vape. It’s astonishing, a fantastic example, I love that one.
At City St George’s, through our enterprise and innovation teams, we can support innovation across the health landscape to meet the three biggest challenges in future health shifting from analogue to digital, from hospital to community and from treatment to prevention. So for example, some more magic. Consider the benefits of a transition from analogue to digital in the diagnosis of a brain injury. At City St George’s, Cranio offers a non-invasive measurement of pressure within the brain to help diagnose and treat traumatic injury.
Now, current practice involves the insertion of a pressure monitor into the brain via surgery which is highly invasive. Instead, Cranio can use low-power infrared light to measure pulse signals and machine learning algorithms then convert those signals into an estimate of intracranial pressure that can be used to diagnose the scale of the injury. We’re currently working with hospitals across London, including St George’s NHS Trust and the Royal Free to validate this technology. Academic experts from City St George’s plan to expand that portfolio and use that technology to diagnose cardiovascular and final injuries non-invasively, fantastic.
Secondly, another example, Bridges empowers patients living with the impact of strokes, neurological conditions and brain injury to become more involved in their rehabilitation and long-term health management. Through Bridge’s highly interactive workshops, staff involved throughout the patient care pathway are trained in how to empower patients to manage their conditions. This empowers healthcare workers and patients to ensure better primary care, and it reduces the burden on hospitals.
Lastly, returning to the vape, here is an example of embracing the shift from treatment to prevention. Researchers at City St George’s have developed a platform for delivering vaccines that can be inhaled rather than injected and that has a faster therapeutic effect compared with injected versions. This technology has been tested for use to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine and can be easily used to vaccinate large populations in areas where healthcare is not readily available.
City, St George’s is a key partner for health innovators in South London, we offer flexible, practical support. For example, the Nexus space, is a new flexible working meeting space right in the heart of our campus, right in the thick of it, funded by a generous grant from Research England. It’s an ideal setting for SMEs looking to scale up, connect with experts and tap into our extensive academic and clinical network, and don’t forget that the academic network has just got bigger.
As part of City St George’s, there are even more opportunities for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise that you can tap into to support you. We’ve recently developed an offering of lab and office space for rent on-site in Tooting. It’s available for a large range of industry needs, and we offer access to our expert facilities, including tissue culture labs and the image resource facility. While all our space is currently occupied, and this is great evidence of the huge amount of work that’s going on in this part of London, we’ve got plans to further develop more space in the coming year, and if it’s of interest to you to get involved with us, please let us know.
To conclude, I hope I’ve given you a brief overview of City St George’s and the work that we’re doing here. We would very much welcome being part of the important, innovative change-making community that you represent. I hope that we can continue to work together on new, exciting and indeed magical projects together. So do reach out, and get to know us, we’d love to learn what you’re doing and how we can help. Thank you all for listening, and thank you for your time.
Paul Kirkbright, Head of Knowledge Exchange and Partnerships, South London Partnership & BIG South London
Does anyone have any questions for Sionade about the ambition of this fantastic new mega university that we have now in South West London? Particularly as it will be the largest medical educator in the capital, which I think is a fantastic platform for partners to engage with and build out from.
So while we’ve got Sionade and she’s formed her way here through torrance and tidal wave and the underground, it would be a bit rude not to ask a burning question now, if you don’t have it. Basically, put your hand up. David. Thank you for saving my life.
Delegate
Hi Sionade, I just wanted to ask you a bit more about spin-outs, giving the previous session was about spin-outs. How many are there, how are they going, and what are you going to do with the money that you earn out of it? Are you going to put that back into the innovation ecosystem?
Sionade Robinson, Vice President of Enterprise, Engagement and Employability, City St George’s University of London
I have to admit, I can’t give you a very comprehensive answer about spinouts, because at the moment, our spin-out activity, of course, is coming together from two separate universities.
I do know that there are several spin-outs within the Legacy City portfolio, and of course, there are five fantastic spin-outs that are coming from Tooting. We do well on our spin-outs and we do them on our carefree terms, I think we’re doing pretty well. I wouldn’t say we’re making a lot of money to reinvest yet, but we’re very confident, and we have a lot of expertise devoted to supporting spin-outs within the institution. So if you follow up with me, I can get into more detail, I’d need to ask my colleagues.
Paul Kirkbright, Head of Knowledge Exchange and Partnerships, South London Partnership & BIG South London
I think that’s one of the really interesting things about the merger, which is the potential for interdisciplinary collaboration, where perhaps St George’s has centred on its world-leading health and biomedical science, but there is now a broader set of academic colleagues to enrich that collaboration as well.
Sionade Robinson, Vice President of Enterprise, Engagement and Employability, City St George’s University of London
One example would be about mental health and well-being and the role that creativity can play within that. We have global expertise in the creative industries and we are also happy to say that we have a performing arts school. So bringing the arts, and performance creativity into conversations that we’re collaborating on now as well as mental health and well-being, it’s offering all kinds of opportunities for innovation. I think mental health is something that deserves a lot more support, so that’s a nice example of what’s happening.
Paul Kirkbright, Head of Knowledge Exchange and Partnerships, South London Partnership & BIG South London
I think Sionade is sticking around for the Post-Summit reception. So if anybody wants to pick up any discussions with her then that would be great. If we can show our appreciation in the usual ways, I’d also like to introduce Angela Flaherty and Matthew Hamilton.
Angela Flaherty, Director of Strategy and Development, NHS South West London, South West London Integrated Care System
Thanks, Paul. It’s incredible to see the NHS and a broader range of partners coming together to think about health and care in South West London and how we can improve it collaboratively. My eyes have been opened. I’ve been in the NHS for nearly 30 years working in and around it and I’ve worked overseas as well.
But the power of this today, of our minds coming together, is just so important in taking the time out. I’ve nagged my NHS colleagues, we’ve got Martin in the back there who didn’t need much nagging to come along today, but others to say, ‘Let’s lift our heads let’s look away from the day job, the today, the next week, the next month, we’ve got to look right out. Our only solution to the burning challenge we’ve got in health at the moment is to collaborate, and we need to do it quickly. We’re running out of road.’
So another big thank you to all of you, your energy, your enthusiasm and your passion to get this going in South London is very much appreciated.
Matthew Hamilton, Director, South London Partnership
Thanks, Angela. I just want to reinforce that. I think there’s been a fantastic collaboration between both the South London Partnership and NHS, it’s been a really good partnership.
Indeed, we’re talking about anchor institutions, only next week, and how they work together. So that’s a really important point, and I look forward to building on that momentum going forward.
I took many things from today, but I think a couple of things that came out time and time again were not just talking about digital connectivity, but also the connectivity from our paths, and the importance of working collaboratively together.
This is the third of our Summits, and I’m always amazed by the amount of energy that they generate and the importance of the networking that comes from this. But these things don’t happen just by chance. We don’t all turn up on a rainy day and suddenly appear here. It’s because of the hard work of others.
I’d like to thank LSBU for hosting us today at this wonderful new facility. It’s really been able to showcase that, and they’ve been a fantastic partner, building on the growth and work that we took forward and now taking that to the next step. So I want to thank Gulnara and all her colleagues for their hard work.
I also wanted to thank all of the SLP team who have been key to this, and all of the speakers and the panellists who provided us with a great opportunity to listen to a wide range of areas. Health innovation is key and I’m looking forward to showcasing in the Growth Plan that this is the go-to place for health innovation, and we’ll make sure that that is outlined in there.
Quick thank you to Recognition Creative, always fantastic facilitation of what we do, really appreciate that. And my final thank you is the glue that holds it all together, the wonderful Paul Kirkbright.
