CMI directors to stand down

The executive directors of the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) are to step down in January.

The CMI is looking for replacements for Alan Windle, Cambridge CMI executive director, and John Vander Sande, Massachusetts Institute of Technology CMI executive director.

Professor Windle took up his post two years ago, while Professor Vander Sande has been at CMI since its launch three years ago. Both are materials scientists.

The institute received an unprecedented £65 million for its first five years from the UK government to "provide a catalyst to improve economic competitiveness and productivity, while working with UK universities to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in higher education".

Part of the two directors' roles was to raise £16 million from the private sector, but so far they have formally only raised £10 million.

A spokeswoman for CMI said the directors felt they had completed their jobs of setting up the partnership between the two institutions. Their successors would work on raising funding to take CMI beyond its first five years.

CMI has set up joint research projects between the two universities, has a programme of transatlantic student exchanges, has organised training for staff in technology transfer offices and has been disseminating its research through the National Competitiveness Network.