This kind of explicit campaigning had traditionally been unusual for UK universities, and was similar to US university funding. UCL had a financial endowment in the top ten among UK universities at £81m, according to the Sutton Trust (2002). Grant also aimed to enhance UCL's global links, declaring UCL London's "Global University". Significant interactions with France's École Normale Supérieure, Columbia University, Caltech, New York University, University of Texas, Villanova University and universities in Osaka developed during the first few years of his tenure as provost. The London Centre for Nanotechnology was established in 2003 as a joint venture between UCL and Imperial College London. They were later joined by King's College London in 2018. Since 2003, when UCL professor David Latchman became master of the neighbouring Birkbeck, he had forged closer relations between these two University of London colleges, and personally maintained departments at both institutions. Joint research centres included the UCL/Birkbeck Institute for Earth and Planetary Sciences, the UCL/Birkbeck/IoE Centre for Educational Neuroscience, the UCL/Birkbeck Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, and the Birkbeck-UCL Centre for Neuroimaging. UCL's strengths in biomedicine were significantly augmented with the move of the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) from Mill Hill to UCL as preferred partner, announced in 2006. Founded in 1913 and the Medical Research Council's first and largest laboratory, its scientists had garnered five Nobel prizes. NIMR employed over 700 scientists and hd an annual budget of £27 million. Construction of the new premises, the Francis Crick Institute, commenced in 2011; King's College London and Imperial College also became partners of the Institute. The UCL Ear Institute was established, with the support of a grant from the Wellcome Foundation, on 1 January 2005. In 2007, teaching and research were separated in the Faculty of Life Sciences. In the process UCL's departments of Pharmacology and Physiology vanished (see Department of Pharmacology at University College London, 1905 – 2007. UCL applied to the Privy Council for the power to award degrees in its own right. This was granted in September 2005, and the first degrees were awarded in 2008. In 2007, the UCL Cancer Institute was opened in the newly constructed Paul O'Gorman Building. In August 2008, UCL formed UCL Partners, an academic health science centre, with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and University College London Hospitals