Critical Mass of Expertise

The STFC Daresbury Laboratory has 550 staff, who support the work of over 5000 scientists and engineers from industry and the university research community. The on-site facilities are used in a diverse range of research programmes, including physical and engineering sciences, biomedical and environmental research and materials development
and characterisation.

A key facility on-site is the Synchrotron Radiation (SRS), which is a world class facility dedicated to the exploitation of synchrotron radiation (SR) for fundamental and applied research. The unique characteristics of the SR beam enable studies associated with product development and non-conformance which are intractable via other more
traditional methods.

The STFC Computational Science and Engineering (CSED), facilitates the powerful combination of experiment with theory, modeling and simulation. CSED provides world-class expertise and support for UK theoretical and computational science communities, in both academia and industry. It is also leading the UK in networking services and technology development.  The STFC's cost-effective and efficient services are enabling predictions from complex theories to be calculated from first principles and compared directly with experimental data, and making it possible to analyse millions of megabytes of data via grid networks.

The development and support of major research facilities, such as those at Daresbury, requires substantial technical infrastructure, including a critical mass of highly skilled engineers, technicians and instrumentation developers.  The engineering and instrumentation capability offered at Daresbury is of particular benefit to broader application areas such as sensors and imaging technology, electronics, mechatronics, vacuum science, radio frequency (RF) and power
supply technologies.