The Open University to contribute to our Milton Keynes forum

Image: The Open University at Milton Keynes - part of the campus (courtesy The Open University)

Future Cities Forum is delighted that Dr Julia Cooke, Associate Dean -External Engagement and Enterprise in the Faculty of STEM - will be contributing to our OxCam Growth Corridor forum at the offices of Milton Keynes City Council.

The Open University has its 48-hectare head quarters campus at Walton Hall in Milton Keynes and has satellite offices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Open University has pioneered distance learning for over 50 years, to students across the UK and the world.

A new Civic University Agreement for Milton Keynes, backed by some of the city’s biggest and most innovative organisations, was launched last November, to drive skills growth and innovation across Milton Keynes.

Led by The Open University, Cranfield University and Milton Keynes College, the agreement seeks to foster deeper collaboration between the signatory organisations for the benefit of the city and future generations, seizing on the opportunities of the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor.

The Open University, Cranfield University, and Milton Keynes College already work closely with individuals, charities, and businesses across Milton Keynes to create and expand opportunities for skills development. Across sectors such as automation and robotics, smart cities, tech-enabled healthcare, manufacturing and advanced transportation, Milton Keynes is rapidly emerging as an innovation hub.

The new Civic University Agreement aims to capitalise and strengthen the thriving tech ecosystem, high-quality skills training, and world-class research that is already present in the city, making sure that the benefits and opportunities are available to all residents across Milton Keynes. A detailed work plan and further announcements will be made in early 2026.

Dr Cooke is a plant ecologist and a main research interest is the functional ecology of plant silicon, that is, how plants use silicon. She says:

'I brought together information from agronomy and palaeontology to argue that plant ecology is more siliceous than we realise (Cooke and Leishman, 2010), and contributed to a more quantitative, ecological exploration of why plants silicify (de Tombeur et al 2022).

'I illustrated that silicon could be part of the leaf dry mass economics spectrum, by showing Si accumulation is higher in shorter lived leaves (Cooke and Leishman, 2011), and showed that there are trade-offs between foliar silicon and carbon-based defences (Cooke and Leishman, 2012). I combined data from multiple studies, in meta-analyses, to show clear patterns in responses of stressed plants to silicon fertiliser (Cooke and Leishman, 2016), that stress alters the role of silicon in controlling water movement (Cooke and Carey, 2023), silicon impacts chewing herbivores more that sap suckers (Johnson et al, 2024), and affects various pathogens differently (Thorne et al, in review). Working with students, we showed that flowers accumulate silicon and suggests potential functions (Schoelynck et al. 2023) and how Silicon isotopes contribute understanding Si use in papyrus (Lodi et al, in review). In 2016 I co-edited two journal special issues on plant silicon in Functional Ecology and Frontiers in Plant Sciences and podcasts about my siliceous research are here and here. I also co-manage Siliceous Plants, a website about plant silicon research.'

Image: Dr Julia Cooke - courtesy of the Open University