New Pro-Provost (Academic Planning) announced to help deliver UCL’s new strategy

President & Provost Dr Michael Spence is now working with UCL’s Vice-Provosts and Vice-Presidents towards creating a single UCL strategy that will set the university’s agenda for the next five years, with consultations across UCL due to begin this summer. In this new role, Professor Rees will act as an adviser to Dr Spence through this process and provide senior academic input into the frameworks, systems and processes that will translate the strategy into action.

The role of Pro-Provost, an interim one that will exist for a maximum of 18 months, will also help to induct a new permanent Vice-President (Strategy), a new post created to lead on planning and major projects now being recruited, and support them and provide a sounding board as they become familiar with UCL.

Professor Rees is currently Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, a role he will continue in during his Pro-Provost appointment, with support from a new Deputy Dean who will be recruited shortly. As well as being Professor of Cognitive Neurology, he has held a number of academic leadership roles at UCL, including Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Brain Sciences. He has also played a key role in leading and coordinating cross-disciplinary research and translation, including as Pro-Vice-Provost (Artificial Intelligence) and as UCL’s COVID-19 Response Lead.

He says:

“This is an exciting opportunity to ensure strong academic input into our new institutional strategy. UCL is facing the post-pandemic, post-Brexit landscape in a strong position thanks to the hard work and talent of our entire community. My role will be to now help colleagues across the institution develop an ambitious, focused vision for the next five years, and turn that into reality. It is a huge privilege to be working with so many talented people on such a central task.”

Welcoming the appointment, Dr Spence says:

“This Pro-Provost role will be a pivotal link between the academic community and UCL’s planning team as well as providing me with a critical friend who will ensure that the institutional strategy we develop is always responding to the academic context. Geraint is a hugely talented academic leader who is extremely experienced at translating vision into high quality reality. I’m really looking forward to working with him on creating a strategy that will take UCL to the next level of global impact and excellence.”