£100m for jewel in UK science crown
30 Mar 2010
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson announced the allocation of £97.4 million to the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) for Diamond’s Phase III development at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
Diamond is capable of studying a huge variety of samples from every discipline of scientific research. Recent examples of samples studied have included brain tissue to further our understanding of Parkinson’s disease and metal for hip replacements.
It is a giant machine called a Synchrotron which uses cutting-edge technology to generate beams of light, from infra-red to X-rays, to examine the properties of materials at an atomic and molecular level.
Today’s funding boost, together with a £13.8 million contribution from the Wellcome Trust, will add 10 more beamlines to the facility, eventually bringing the total to 32. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/
Once the new beamlines are up and running, they could potentially benefit almost every aspect of our lives and lead to applications such as:
Developing cheaper and more effective ways to remove toxins from polluted soils
Providing high resolution 3D images of biological samples which will further our knowledge of diseases and help develop new therapies;
Examining the electronic structure of complex materials that have a potentially great impact on the development of new ultra-fast electronic devices and materials for energy storage.
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BIS also announced the allocation of £48 million to the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to replace the RRS Discovery research ship.
Useful links
This funding for STFC and NERC are the latest allocations from the Science and Research Budget’s Large Facilities Capital Fund .
Read the BIS press notice here
Read more about the Diamond Light Source
