Manchester Metropolitan University launches European research group

MANCHESTER Metropolitan University has launched Biomove – a new European research consortium based in its 5* Institute for Human Movement.

The European Consortium for Research into Biological Movement (Biomove) brings together research scientists from across Europe who study the strengths and weaknesses of the human body from both athletic and clinical perspectives.

More than 100 delegates attended the inaugural meeting in Cheshire including 65 scientists from the Netherlands where the University has four partners, Vrije University, Amsterdam, and three medical centres – Vrije Medical Centre, the University Medical Centre (St Radboud) and the Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam.

The consortium which underpins preparations for a second 5* in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise is negotiating with additional potential partners in Belgium, Italy and Denmark.

Professor Tony Sargeant, who set up Biomove with Professor Arnold De Haan, a part-time member of staff at MMU and Professor at Vrije, said: “The founding of the new consortium opens up exciting new opportunities for collaboration with some of the best scientists in the world researching into, for example, how surgery can improve the mobility of children with cerebral palsy; how exercise programmes can maintain mobility in the healthy elderly; and how growth-factors and genes degenerate in diseases such as cancer and kidney failure.”

He added that the consortium would take a positive and proactive approach to research collaborations and would not become “just another research association”.

MMU Vice-Chancellor Dame Alexandra Burslem said: “The new consortium will build an even more vibrant research environment which will help to improve the mobility of many people in both health and disease throughout their life span.”

Sessions in the inaugural programme were chaired by MMU professors Alberto Minetti, Marco Narici, Geert Savelsbergh, Arnold de Haan, and David Jones.