IARU Newsletter 5

On behalf of the UCT Secretariat team, we are delighted to share the last IARU Newsletter for 2024 with you. The newsletter aims to keep members updated about discussions and decisions from the Presidents' and Senior Officers' meetings, showcase the work of our groups and initiatives, and share other news from within the IARU community. The newsletter aims to keep members updated about discussions and decisions from the Presidents' and Senior Officers' meetings, showcase the work of our groups and initiatives, and share other news from within the IARU community. We would be grateful if group leads could circulate the newsletter to their group members.

We look forward to the Presidents' meetings at ETH Zurich from 18 and 19 January 2025. We would love to receive feedback, suggestions, or content for future newsletters, so please contact the Secretariat at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

You can view the newsletter as a PDF or explore the content through the links below.

Early-Career Collaboration Awards: Reflections from previous awardees

In recent years, the power of virtual collaboration has become undeniable, yet there are moments when nothing compares to the depth and impact of in-person engagement.

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2024 combined IARU Presidents’ and Senior Officers’ Meeting highlights

This year the IARU Presidents and Senior Officers convened at Yale University from 10-12 June 2024 for the combined IARU Presidents’ and Senior Officers’ Meeting to discuss key organisational, research, and strategic priorities.

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Real Estate Working Group hosts another successful general meeting

The IARU Real Estate Working Group (REWG) serves as a platform for members to collaborate, share information and address interests and challenges commonly found within real estate management.

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UCT Research Symposium 2024: The Role of AI in Research

This year’s Role of AI in Research Symposium, hosted by the University of Cape Town (UCT), brought together experts, researchers and academics to explore the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on contemporary research.

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NUS sustainability report

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is committed to this mission and has made meaningful progress in advancing environmental sustainability, in the areas of education, research and innovation, campus operations and leadership

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Ageing, Longevity and Health Initiative: ECR website

The IARU Ageing, Longevity and Health (ALH) group has had a productive year, marked by significant events and initiatives aimed at fostering research collaboration and supporting early career researchers (ECRs).

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IARU Key Contacts

If you have any questions about IARU related matters, please contact the Secretariat. You can find the Key Contacts for your institution here.

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Newsletter Initiative Updates

IARU Courses and Joint Course

The global COVID-19 pandemic has continued to impact student travel and so, in turn, the IARU Courses have had to adapt and revise their offerings to work within these constraints. The participating institutions have endeavoured to produce a stimulating and varied programme, covering topics such as 'Environmental Challenges and Sustainable Development in China', 'Afropolitanism, Social Justice and Entrepreneurship' and 'Sustainable Ageing'. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, a total of 17 courses were offered by 8 institutions and were attended by 51 students. It is hoped that the IARU Courses will be able to expand and realise their full potential as restrictions ease in the future and in-person courses will be able to take place once more.

Building on the success of the University of Tokyo-Peking University joint online course ‘East Asia and the World under the Pandemic’ in 2020, the 2021 IARU Joint Course between University of Copenhagen and the University of Tokyo was conducted on the subject of 'Sustainable Ageing'. In total, 27 students from 15 universities (with the majority of students from IARU institutions) completed the course and received the certificate. This online course was an opportunity for collaborative activities among Ageing, Longevity and Health initiative members. As a result, Copenhagen and Tokyo members have begun discussing possible collaboration in research and education.

The programme for the 2022 IARU Courses has now been published.

Global Internship Program (GIP)

Three IARU universities were able to offer internships in 2021, enabling students to gain invaluable experience in their chosen field. Oxford was able to provide two virtual internships (one student from Peking University and another from the University of Copenhagen) based at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, a multidisciplinary research institute concerned with the processes and implications of global demographic change. The participants praised the learning experience as flexible and rigorous, adding that they received excellent support.

Another student from the University of Copenhagen took up a role as Program Assistant for the IARU Virtual Museum Tours project, working with Peking University. The impressive results of the Virtual Museum Tours initiative are now being published on the IARU website and form a wonderful resource for the longer term.

The University of Tokyo have awarded an in-person internship to a student from ETH Zurich based at the International Research Center for Neurointelligence, which will begin once travel restrictions ease.

GIP Student Feedback

“Overall, I was extremely happy with the internship, especially regarding the difficult circumstances due to Covid-19. The team from the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and Prof. George Leeson were extremely helpful from the beginning and offered me different possibilities on how to pursue the internship program.

During the course of the internship I worked on my Master’s thesis and received guidance mainly from Prof. Leeson but also other Institute personnel and PhD students. Both the thesis supervision and the seminars were excellent and provided me with a lot of new insights for my research as well as other perspectives on the topic of population ageing.”

2021 GIP Student

Ageing, Health and Longevity (ALH) Initiative

The annual ALH Graduate Student Conference was hosted online by University of Cambridge on 6-8 October 2021, focusing on capacity building, research collaborations and engagement. The objectives were i) to select topics and develop 2-3 project outlines to kick-start funding applications and early career researcher collaborations; ii) develop the blueprint of a short video presenting why engaging older people in research matters and examples of how it is done in some of our universities; iii) identify the topic for another position paper on emerging and/or an under-researched, ageing-related challenge.  The report will be published on the IARU website in due course.

The group also published a paper in 2021 entitled ‘The Societal Need for Interdisciplinary Ageing Research’ (2021), outlining their vision and the unique position of our interdisciplinary network to produce new knowledge to promote healthy ageing and encourage societal change via novel, science-informed interventions. 

Novo Nordisk International Talent Program

The Novo Nordisk International Talent Program supports student mobility between University of Copenhagen and partners in IARU universities within the area of Science and Health Sciences. The programme gives priority to projects pertaining to metabolism, insulin, haemoglobin, obesity, big data and digitalisation. In the academic year 2020-21, 6 students were awarded a NNITP scholarship. The final deadline for the scheme is 1 April 2022 (the scheme will be closing in 2022). We encourage our partners in IARU to share this opportunity with students. Please visit https://studies.ku.dk/visiting/scholarships/ for further information.

Newsletter Group Updates

Alumni Associations Network

A meeting of IARU alumni directors was convened in May 2021 to share how they and their teams have adapted to the new way of working and the impact it has had on overall engagement with alumni.

The network discussed the creative ways in which online engagement has helped to broaden the reach of alumni activities around the world.

In their September 2021 meeting, the Alumni Associations Network explored plans for the next 12 months regarding in-person versus virtual gatherings, with most institutions planning to deliver events in a hybrid mode.

Cybersecurity Forum

During the course of 2021, the Cybersecurity Forum met in a series of virtual meetings to discuss cybersecurity challenges during the pandemic and exchange experiences on other selected topics, such as zero trust and multi factor authentication.

The Forum's future plans include focussing on areas such as intelligence sharing, KPIs and risk tolerance frameworks, and policy development. They also hope to launch a more technical stream designed for Computer Emergency Response Teams to share experience and best practice.

Gender Group

The central topics for the Gender Group in 2021 have included how to address the effects of COVID on women's research productivity, how to develop gender equity plans (with reference  to the Horizon Europe funding platform requirements), Gender  Group  administration  and  future  planning.

Later in the year, the Group met to debate sexual harassment, intersectionality, LGBTQ+ issues and gender equality in a post-COVID world. They hope to meet in person in Copenhagen in 2022.

Global Transformation

The Global Transformation group successfully held a IARU roundtable at the international conference "Asia and Africa in Transition" at the University of Copenhagen, 28-30 June 2021. The discussion on 'Strengthening Institutional Capacities for Trans-Continental Collaborations with African or Asian Research and Education Hubs' covered key points such as innovative formats for collaboration and advice for universities engaged in trans-continental collaborations. 

In 2023, the group hopes to restart its Borderland Field Research Course in Chiang Mai, Thailand, which has been impacted by the travel restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

HR Consultation Group

The National University of Singapore hosted the first meeting of the HR Consultation group in 2021, where the group considered the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the HR response. In the summer, promotion and tenure of academic staff was discussed at a meeting convened by the University of Copenhagen.

Librarians' Contact Group

2021 was a year of dramatic change for IARU libraries. COVID-19 necessitated a shift to digital services together with the development of improved ways of sharing information to support online education and research.

IARU libraries also created a guide to the services available from all members’ libraries to help scholars and students when universities could only offer limited physical access to campuses during the COVID-19 response.

After discussion about the need to make the journey to libraries and their collections more transparent and valuable for in-person and virtual visitors from other IARU institutions, a ‘IARU Libraries Passport’ has been developed and is currently being reviewed, with the hope that it will launch soon.

Individual IARU libraries have undertaken a wide range of activities that implement the UNSDG. An article, ‘Sustainable Development Goals: Insights from Research Libraries’ by Roxanne Missingham (ANU), was published in the International Journal of Librarianship, contextualising and reporting on initiatives that support the framework.

Lifelong Learning

The Lifelong Learning Working Group met virtually in 2021, sharing best teaching continuity practices to cope with COVID-19 challenges. All institutions successfully switched to online delivery of continuous education classes, and with time, most instructors were able to teach using virtual conferencing platforms. Micro-credentials were discussed at the group’s April meeting, with ANU, ETH Zurich and NUS sharing how their institutions structured micro-credentials for their courses. 

Real Estate

The  inaugural meeting of the Real  Estate  Working  Group  went ahead on 17 June 2021, as well as a workshop in collaboration with the Sustainable Campus Initiative on ‘The Future of Work’. Discussions focussed on introductions to the group and setting terms of reference for meetings, as well as objectives for the period.

The workstreams that have been identified for 2020-23 are:

1) Future Learning environment: best practice/design guidelines

2) Space Use and Efficiency: benchmarks/space norms

3) Resource Planning: developing a resource toolkit.

Sustainable Campus Initiative

The steering group has continued to meet virtually on a monthly basis and collaborations continue to develop in this context.

In addition to a new joint project with the Real Estate Group, three key projects have continued and progressed, namely the Scope 3 Carbon Emissions  project,  the  biodiversity  knowledge  sharing  project  and  the Global University Climate Programme.

• 'The Future of Work', a new joint project between the IARU SCI and Real Estate Groups was initiated in 2021. It explores the context of university  real  estate  sustainability  in  the  Covid  and  Post-Covid context.
• Feedback and outcomes from the Global University Climate Forum will be shared at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the SCI.
• The Biodiversity Knowledge sharing project completed their report which has been published on the IARU website
• Scope 3 emissions are the emissions that an institution is indirectly responsible for, up and down its value chain (eg from suppliers, customers and consumers). The aim of the Scope 3 emissions project is to collaborate on potential solutions and best practice tools and methodologies for some of the biggest common challenges when it comes to Scope 3 emissions in universities.

New IARU Chair elected