Campus Partners
The Campus consists of 3 key partners to date:
As the Campus grows and develops it is expected that this list of partners will expand to include additional research institutes, further buildings for SMEs, campus-based large business headquarters and technical skills academies.
The Cockcroft Institute is a collaboration involving Lancaster University, the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester, STFC and the NWDA. As the National Centre for Accelerator Science it is the key focal point in the UK for development of scientific research and engagement in international collaborations. To aid the institute’s objective of providing the intellectual focus, educational infrastructure and the essential scientific and technological facilities for accelerator science and technology R&D, Daresbury Laboratory’s Accelerator Science and Technology Centre (ASTeC) has relocated to the Cockcroft building, providing a 70-strong workforce and a strong body of critical mass in accelerator science. Staff at the two establishments interact on a daily basis and having both large-scale accelerator facilities in such close proximity has proved to be a major attractor for world-leading accelerator scientists coming to the Daresbury Campus.
The Daresbury Laboratory is a government-funded research laboratory and has been on the Daresbury site for over four decades. However it was only in 2007 that Daresbury Laboratory became part of the new research council, the Science & Technology Facilities Council. It is a provider of world-class, large-scale facilities, with the capability, through its 500+ staff, to produce significant volumes of high quality research in areas such as accelerator science, computational science and engineering, instrumentation, advanced engineering, heritage science etc.
Daresbury Innovation Centre is home to over 60 high tech SMEs (Small-medium sized enterprises) providing a high quality, scientific and entrepreneurial environment for them to develop their businesses. Through the campus model, the companies have the ability to access leading-edge scientific facilities and expertise in Daresbury Laboratory, as well as the more conventional facilities on site (such as a restaurant, gym, shop, media services, scientific library etc).
Engagement between partners continues to lead to new innovative developments and commercial opportunities – for example a new biomedical spin-out company could be created from initial research done at the laboratory through an idea from a company in the innovation centre. Furthermore, collaborations between laboratory staff and innovation centre tenants occur on a regular basis. Good examples of such collaborative programmes have been in the fields of biomedical, instrumentation, engineering and digital/ICT.
There are also exciting opportunities for collaboration between staff in the Cockcroft Institute and the Daresbury Innovation Centre. As the institute expands and develops there will be a greater need for support in the instrumentation, engineering and digital/ICT fields and the profiles of many tenants in the innovation centre are ideally suited to cater for this need. Moreover, the need for access to accelerator expertise by leading-edge organisations is burgeoning, and already the possibility of utilising such knowledge in the biomedical and security sectors is being vigorously pursued.