Users

The STFC is a science and technology driven organisation which enables a broad range of researchers to carry out the highest quality research and tackle some of the most fundamental and applied scientific questions.

At Daresbury, it is estimated that around 7,000 people per year access the science and technology programmes available on-site. Whilst the majority of these are academics from UK universities and government research laboratories (physicists, chemists, engineers, materials and bio scientists), there are also increasing numbers of industrialists accessing the STFC facilities and collaborating with on-site staff. The STFC has now established a ‘Wider Access Sales Team’ to further engage with industry and to promote the STFC facilities, technology and skills base for knowledge exchange.

The major on-site facilities accessed by academic and industrial users are the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS), the computational science and engineering capability (including the high performance computing facility HPCx), SuperSTEM the world’s most resolving electron microscope, the Medium Energy Ion Scattering Facility (MEIS) and the National Centre for Surface and Electron Spectroscopy (NCESS). All of these facilities offer access to state-of-the-art instrumentation and highly skilled scientists and engineers to solve problems often intractable through conventional techniques. Increasingly, the engineering and instrumentation infrastructure at Daresbury is being utilised by industrial customers for professional engineering design, clean room and vacuum technology expertise.