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 100 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 The Laboratory, 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 securitysectors is being
vigorously pursued.