David Webb with Debra Humphris and Summer

Pharmacists will play an increasing role in front-line clinical healthcare, Chief Pharmaceutical Officer tells pharmacy students at Brighton

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England, David Webb, on his visit to the university, told students that this was an exciting moment for the profession.

In a speech to staff and students at the University of Brighton this week, David Webb said that changes such as the introduction of prescribing skills training to the undergraduate MPharm degree and the Pharmacy First initiative will mean that pharmacists play an increasingly important role in primary healthcare delivery.

David Webb told the audience: “From 2026, all newly-qualified pharmacists will be independent prescribers. The aim is to enable better patient care and use of skill mix in pharmacy and enable effective deployment of the skills and knowledge of Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. This is an exciting step towards opening new horizons, across all sectors, including urgent care.”

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Dr Crooks and Dr Zeisset next to award logo

Award winning teaching and learning practices

Congratulations to LearnSci Teaching Innovation Awards winners, Dr Neil Crooks and Dr Inga Zeisset.

The awards recognise innovative, impactful practices in teaching and learning. Dr Crooks and Dr Zeisset’s were recognised for Advanced interactive assessments reduce marking burden and build confidence in a large cohort of students.

The judges commented: I really like the way this is not just a unique dataset for each student but the way they collectively contribute to class data and therefore the ‘live’ element to this.

Find out more about Dr Crooks and Dr Zeisset’s award as well as other award winners and finalists.

Urban model with building and roads

Fellowship for Senior Lecturer


Andrew Coleman, Senior Lecturer on the MSc Town Planning and Chartered Apprenticeship Degree, has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute.

The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) is a leading membership organisation and a Chartered Institute responsible for maintaining professional standards and accrediting world class planning courses nationally and internationally. The organisation champions the power of planning in creating prosperous places and vibrant communities. Fellowship is one of the highest professional attainments available to a planner and Fellows must have made a major personal contribution to the planning profession for the benefit of the public.

Andrew Coleman headshot

Andrew Coleman’s research reflects a deep specialism in environmentalism and how to manage the risk of flooding through the planning system. He has contributed to government, government agency and research organisation projects and gained a wide range of experience, from working in private and public sectors, including in academia, as well as practising internationally, in Trinidad and Tobago. He is co-author of guidance on delivering better water management through the planning system and also a board member of the University of Brighton’s Centre for Earth Observation Science.

Speaking about the Fellowship Andrew Coleman said, “I am very honoured to be elected as Fellow of the RTPI. Ever since joining the RTPI, I have retained a profound belief that planning can deliver a better present and future for people and the environment.

“Pursuing this objective is becoming even more urgent given the climate and biodiversity crises facing the world. In my current teaching, research, RTPI and environmental activist roles, I am dedicated to equipping current and future planners with the tools to meet these challenges and my election as a Fellow demonstrates the importance that the RTPI places on addressing these issues.”

Three males in a line smiling at the camera

Prize award for Geography student

Congratulations to final year Geography BSc student Dom Jarvis who has been awarded the inaugural Richard Reed Prize sponsored by Friends of the South Downs.

The Richard Reed prize, named after one of the co-founders of the Friends of the South Downs, is an award of £500 for the most improved performance by a BSc/BA student within our Geography, the Earth and Environment subject area. It is based on their academic results over their first and second years.

Dom (centre) was presented with the award by Paul Wilkinson (right) Membership & Marketing Committee Chair for Friends of the South Downs and Dr Matthew Brolly (left), Principal Lecturer in geography and environmental sciences courses at the University of Brighton.

TEF silver 2023 logo

Brighton secures national Silver Award for teaching excellence

The University of Brighton has been recognised for the quality of its teaching and student outcomes in a UK-wide evaluation of higher education institutions.

The university has today secured a Silver award in the national Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The award confirms that the student experience and student outcomes across all of the university’s undergraduate provision including apprenticeships are “typically very high quality”, delivering excellence above the rigorous standards set for the UK’s higher education providers. The rating lasts for four years, until September 2027.

The TEF is a national scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS). It aims to encourage universities to improve and deliver excellence in the areas that students care about the most: teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes from their studies.

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RTPI awards for research excellence logo

Graduate finalist in prestigious town planning awards

Congratulations to Town Planning graduate Laura Hemsley for reaching the finals of the prestigious Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Awards for Research Excellence (Student Award).

Now in their ninth year, the awards continue to recognise and promote high quality, impactful spatial planning research. Laura was nominated for her masters dissertation, ‘The Effectiveness of Strategic Planning Arrangements in Mineral Planning’.

We caught up with her to find out more about her dissertation, the support from her lecturers and what it meant to be nominated for the award.

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Worthing Crematorium garden with trees and the building with blue sky

Brighton researchers helping create world’s first hydrogen-powered crematorium

A project to create the world’s first hydrogen-powered crematorium is being supported by a team of researchers from the University of Brighton.

The pioneering project, funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, is centred on Worthing Crematorium in West Sussex and is part of Adur & Worthing Council’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2030.

This summer, cremator manufacturer DFW Europe will begin testing pioneering hydrogen technology at its base in the Netherlands. If these tests are successful, the technology will be brought over to trial at Worthing Crematorium as early as spring 2024.

Dr Kevin Wyche, Pete Lyons and Dr Kirsty Smallbone from the University of Brighton’s School of Applied Sciences are carrying out air quality monitoring on the project to demonstrate that the proposed new hydrogen-powered system can dramatically reduce carbon emissions without worsening air quality.

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Abeer Aamir

Brighton pharmacy student wins prestigious national award

Thanks to her exceptional work in advancing equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at the University of Brighton, Pharmacy MPharm student Abeer Aamir has won this year’s David Kearney Award from the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association (BPSA).

Abeer, who has just finished her third year, described herself as “incredibly grateful and humbled” to receive the prestigious national award, which recognises outstanding contribution to pharmacy over the past 12 months. 

The nomination calls Abeer’s commitment to promoting inclusivity and diversity within the pharmacy profession “a testament to her dedication to advancing the field, keeping patients safe, and making it more equitable and accessible for all individuals”.

“As a first-generation immigrant and a pharmacy student, I’ve seen both sides of the coin,” Abeer said. “I’ve seen the ways in which medical racism penetrates the healthcare profession, and it really does disproportionately affect people of colour and women. So, using all that lived experience, I really hope to shine a light on unconscious bias and unconscious medical racism, so that the curriculum is a lot more reflective of the population that our graduates are serving.”

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Bhavik in the lab wearing a white lab coat with colours writing and drawing

University of Brighton scientist wins prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry Prize

Professor Bhavik Patel has won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Analytical Science mid-career Prize in recognition of brilliance in research and innovation.

Based at the University of Brighton’s School of Applied Sciences, the Professor of Clinical and Bioanalytical Chemistry has been named winner of the prize for the development of innovative electrochemical sensors for advancing the understanding of biological signalling processes. This year’s winners join a prestigious list of past winners in the RSC’s prize portfolio, 60 of whom have gone on to win Nobel Prizes for their work, including 2022 Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi and 2019 Nobel laureate John B Goodenough.

After receiving the prize, Professor Patel said: “This prize is real recognition for me and my group on our research approach to create sensors which are fit-for-purpose and provide impactful knowledge about biological systems.”

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Back of a person crouching down in front of a rock

Brighton researchers to explore better sourcing of vital rare earth elements needed in battle to decarbonise

University of Brighton researchers have received a £799,950 grant to explore more efficient and less damaging ways to source vital rare earth elements.

Researchers from the School of Applied Sciences and the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Brighton have been awarded a £799,950 grant by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to investigate the rock weathering processes in generating deposits of Rare Earth Elements (REEs). Information gleaned from the SCREED project should help to predict resource potential and minimise the environmental impact of extraction.

REEs are part of a group of elements that are crucial components in high power magnets used in renewable power generation and low carbon transport. In particular, neodymium and dysprosium are essential for renewable energy devices such as wind turbines and the development of electric motors. They are, however, in limited supply worldwide, and University of Brighton researchers will explore ways to access supplies in a more sustainable manner by examining the presence of REEs in rocks that have already been partly broken down by natural weathering.

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