The University of St Andrews is planning a new £45 m School of Medicine and Sciences which it says will not only lead collaborative research in areas such as cancer, health psychology and infectious diseases, but will also be one of the first UK medical schools with research facilities fully integrated with the other sciences and key university disciplines.
The new school is being made possible, in part, by a £8 m donation from the Sekhar Foundation, the charitable arm of the Malaysian-based Petra Group (whose wide-ranging interests include biotechnology, chemicals, environmental technology, IT, financial services, and sport and entertainment). It will be named after the late Dr BC Sekhar, reportedly the “father” of Malaysia’s rubber and palm oil industries.
In a related move set to strengthen links between St Andrews and Malaysia, the Sekhar Foundation, founded by BC Sekhar’s son, Datuk Vinod, has specified that some of the £8 m be used to create a scholarship fund to allow some of Asia’s brightest students to study the arts and sciences at the University for up to four years.
