New £26m Harwell lab fuels research drive (From Oxford Mail)

New £26m Harwell lab fuels research drive

SCIENTISTS say that a £26m laboratory in Harwell will help drive a research revolution.

Staff of the Harwell Science Campus’s new Research Complex with guests at the official launch

The new Research Complex, which has been built alongside the doughnut-shaped Diamond Light Source, will house 150 scientists from various backgrounds, working together on some of the trickiest problems in science.

Managers at the science centre hope that getting physicists, chemists, biologists and mathematicians to work alongside each other will lead to scientific breakthroughs.

Visiting scientists will be able to set up laboratories in the building to use Harwell’s world-class facilities for short and long-term projects.

Andrew Taylor, the head of the campus’s Isis facility, said: “Ten years ago, we recognised the need for a resource like this.

“I remember a colleague from Edinburgh doing work on the ices of one of Jupiter’s moons, and needing one extra measurement.

“After doing most of the work here, he needed that one measurement, and had to drive all the way up to Edinburgh and back to get it.

“We need the local capability to help these more complex experiments.”

He said work carried out at the Research Complex could help design safe ways of storing hydrogen for use in eco-friendly cars, improve data storage in computers and create drugs that can directly target diseased organs.

Fifty scientists are already working at the eco-friendly site, with others applying for five-year grants to bring their research to the new hub.

Cancer researcher Marisa Martin-Fernandez, who was one of the first scientists to move into the new building in April, said: “This is a dream come true.

“On my project we have an astronomer, a physicist, two biologists and a mathematician.

“We take the best of those disciplines and apply them to the problem we’re faced with.

“I have never worked like this before and it’s going to be a step change in the way we do research. The UK is leading the way in this and it’s a revolution in how we’re going to do science.”

The official launch party on Friday was attended by Prof Venki Ramakrishnan, last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and Sir Leszek Broysiewicz, the Medical Research Council’s chief executive.

Wantage MP and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said: “This is a magnificent complex, with some of the best laboratories in the world, to put Harwell at the forefront of global scientific research.

“Everything is in place, so that one day, future Nobel Prize winners could come out of here.”