CAMBRIDGE University is set to offer one academic a dream job as the prestigious institution’s professor of Lego.

    The lucky academic will head their own research department after Cambridge’s faculty of education received £4 million (US$6.2 million) in donations from the Lego Foundation.

    The winning candidate will start the job in October, and will be the director of the university’s Research Center on Play in Education, Development and Learning.

    A board of electors will be selected to choose the new Lego professor, whose work must fall “within the general field of the title of the office.”

    In the latest edition of university magazine The Reporter, Cambridge vice chancellor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz said the new role followed large donations from the toy manufacturer.

    He said he has “accepted with gratitude a benefaction of £1.5 million from the Lego Foundation, payable over three years, of which both the capital and the income may be used to support a Research Center on Play in Education, Development, and Learning within the Faculty of Education over the same period.”

    The Lego Foundation is also “proposing to fund a Lego professorship of play in education, development, and learning with a benefaction of £2.5 million,” the report said.

    A spokesman for the University said more details would be revealed in October.

    The Lego Foundation, which owns 25 percent of the Denmark-based toy company, routinely invests in education, specializing in “learning through play.”

    It describes its aims as being “to make children’s lives better — and communities stronger — by making sure the fundamental value of play is understood, embraced and acted upon.”

    (SD-Agencies)