Roger Brown, principal of Southampton Institute, has been elected vice chairman of the Standing Conference of Principals. The other vice-chairman is John Carter, chief executive of Edge Hill College.
Tim O'Shea, master of Birkbeck College and chair of the London Area Metropolitan Network, which connects all the higher education institutions in the capital electronically, has been appointed provost of Gresham College in London. He will remain master of Birkbeck.
Jacob Klein, who holds the Herman Mark chair of polymer physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, has been appointed head of physical chemistry at the University of Oxford from October next year. He will hold the Dr Lee's chair of physical chemistry. News of his appointment comes a week after Oxford was awarded a Pounds 30 million grant from the Joint Infrastructure Fund to build a new chemistry research laboratory.
Raymond Mullan, director of Newry and Kilkeel Institute of Further and Higher Education, has been appointed chairman of the Association of Northern Ireland Colleges. He replaces Jimmy Masterson, director of North Down and Ards Institute of Further and Higher Education.
Adrienne Rudkin, former director of finance at the London Business School, has been appointed director of finance at the University of Cambridge.
Peter Deer, former director of personnel at University College London has joined the University of Cambridge as director of the newly created personnel division in the university offices.
William Bonfield, director of the interdisciplinary research centre in biomedical materials at Queen Mary and Westfield College, has been appointed to the new chair of medical materials at Cambridge.
Also joining Cambridge in January will be Andrew Woods, former professor of applied mathematics at the University of Bristol. He joins as BP professor of petroleum science.
Mary Jacobus, professor of English at Cornell University, will become a professor of English at Cambridge.
Christopher Hawkesworth, head of the department of earth sciences and professor of geochemistry at the Open University, has been appointed to a chair in earth sciences at Bristol.
Gillian Clark, senior lecturer in ancient history at the University of Liverpool, has been appointed professor in ancient history at Bristol.
Karl Karch, professor of cardiology in the division of cardiology, department of internal medicine at the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tubingen, has also joined Bristol, taking up a chair in cardiology.
Stephen Harrison, professor of health policy at the Nuffield Institute, University of Leeds, has been appointed professor of social policy at the University of Manchester.