Harry Patch, a 109-year-old veteran of the Great War and a member of the workforce which constructed Bristol University’s Wills Memorial Building in 1920s, switched on the new Wills Tower floodlights at a special ceremony held last night [20 February] to celebrate the completion of the tower restoration project.

The University of Bristol Language Centre has been selected by CILT, the National Centre for Languages to take part in a project funded by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) to design and deliver an innovative new language-learning programme. Entitled ‘Gateways into the Professions’, the project connects students with employers and professional bodies while they are still at university.

Bristol University is awarding honorary degrees to Dr Clifford Cocks and Mr Tim Pigott-Smith at today’s degree ceremonies in the Wills Memorial Building [Tuesday 19 February].

The Italian ambassador, His Excellency Giancarlo Aragona, visited the Departments of Italian and Politics in early February.

When I arrived here in 2001, we went through a long and thorough consultation process to define the University’s Mission, Vision and Values. These were then used as a basis for the University Plan for 2004-2009. Council – the University’s governing body – has asked that the Plan be refreshed, though not fundamentally changed, for the period from 2009 onwards.

Two more members of the Department of Earth Sciences are to receive notable awards, hard on the heels of Professor Geoffrey Eglinton's recent triumph.

Professor Dave Bates from the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology is to attempt to ski from Chamonix in France to Zermatt in Switzerland in April to raise money for some of the charities that have supported his research over the past ten years.

The reasons for the steady decline in suicides among young people in the UK are explored in two studies by researchers from the University of Bristol published on bmj.com today.

A Bristol University professor has won a prestigious international award worth US$1 million in recognition of his outstanding achievement in the field of organic geochemistry.

Alex Edge, an undergraduate in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, has won the monthly ifs School of Finance Uni Investor Challenge Prize for the impressive performance of his investment portfolio.

The remains of two new 110-million-year-old carnivorous dinosaurs have been named by a student from Bristol University and his former professor from fossils dug up in the Sahara Desert.

‘Junk DNA’ could hold the secret of the evolutionary origin of complex animals, according to new research from Dartmouth College (NH, USA) and the University of Bristol (UK).