Academia

As one of the UK’s funding research councils, the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has extensive links with the academic community, both nationally and overseas. 

The STFC’s unique role, as the UK’s provider of large research facilities, naturally places it as a central hub for science and technology departments within the university sector.  In addition, the STFC Central Laboratories and the Cockcroft Institute have extremely well-established networks with other overseas laboratories and major facilities.  Collaborations extend from technical, engineering and instrumentation development to end user scientific exploitation by STFC in-house scientists based at the Daresbury Laboratory.

The STFC is also host to a number of related national networks linking UK academia to their core science and technology programmes.  For example, they co-fund the Sensors and Instrumentation Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) which covers the whole of the UK’s sensing community, from academics and large industries to small businesses, research councils and government departments.  The Sensors & Instrumentation KTN embraces sensing in its entirety – from the principles of measurement and novel sensor technologies to instrumentation, deployment and data analysis.  The KTN is a central point of access for sensing information and assistance and much of its success comes from connecting people in supply chains, interest groups and collaborations.

In addition, through the Computational Science and Engineering Department at Daresbury, the STFC is host to a number of Collaborative Computational Projects (CCPs) which assist universities in developing, maintaining and distributing computer programs and promoting the best computational methods. These CCPs are funded by the STFC, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and are focussed on specific areas of research.

At the local level, Daresbury SIC draws great benefit from the stakeholder relationship it has with the three Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester. This takes the form of a fully integrated relationship (for example the staff of the Cockcroft Institute are drawn from these three institutions) as well as through a host of links at many various functional levels within all of the stakeholder organisations.

The STFC can act as a portal into these significant scientific, technical and innovation networks for campus tenants
and partners.