Dear all,

Welcome back, I hope you all had a refreshing and relaxing Christmas break.

A few quick comments on things going into the Spring term:

1) The language centre courses often have a sign up on the first day of the course - this is certainly true for English III and I think it is true for English II as well this term - so don't worry if you have not signed up in advance.

2) I would like to see all of the international students sometime over the next week or so to discuss study plans for the Spring etc, please email me with suggestions for suitable times (if you know what you want to do half an hour will be more than enough, if you have lots of questions please book an hour).

3) Several new MSc courses start this term. Please remember that all MSc courses can be taken as part of optional courses e.g. the new neurobiology course is permitted to students on Protein Science and Biotechnology and the new structural neurobiochemistry is an option for the Molecular and cell Biology students.

4) I have a new course starting this term on Biochemistry of Protein Folding. I plan to do a different format for this course than I have used on previous courses. The course will start at the beginning of February with a 2 hour lecture (date to be announced) and then there will be a gap until March before the class comes back together again, during which time students will do a lot of course work and I will have individual and small group meetings. Please allow 30-40 hours or so of work time between the beginning of February and March 17th if you plan to do this course. There will be no examination, but the course will be graded based on a student presentation. Exact details depend on student numbers. Sign-up deadline will be one week before the first lecture (date to be announced)

5) Please remember that many MSc level courses are pass/fail so that courses that are graded play a big role in determining the final overall grade of the MSc. Note that the 18op dissertaion and the 9op final examination are graded.

6) There will probably be a change in the marking of Pro Gradu projects (instigated by faculty) from the current Latin grading system to a 0-5 grade. However, the rector has decided that this grade will NOT be counted towards the final MSc grade (for reasons that are unclear, at least to me).

7) I have spent most of Christmas writing a 25000 word review and so I have a big backlog of emails from students to get through - apologies to all of you who are waiting, hopefully be the end of this week I will get through them all.

Best wishes,

Lloyd