Confidence is growing at Cheshire's Daresbury Laboratory after the allocation of £26.2 million to science projects in the northwest of England.
Daresbury will have some involvement with six of the nine projects announced by Lord Sainsbury when he visited the laboratory this week. But he ruled out a review of the location for the United Kingdom's new synchrotron. He was responding to calls from staff to uphold a government promise to reconsider its decision over the synchrotron after France decided to build its own machine.
The review recommended that the proposal for a Centre for Accelerator Science, Imaging and Materials be referred to the North West Science and Daresbury Development Group for assessment. The centre would become the flagship of the Daresbury Laboratory.
Lord Sainsbury set up a £25 million fund in March and commissioned the North West Science review team to advise on how it should be spent. Fifty-two proposals were received and the pot was increased by Pounds 1.2 million. The nine successful proposals are:
- Liverpool, Manchester and Salford universities and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology - £4.2 million for superSTEM analytical microscope facility
- Liverpool, Manchester - £2.39 million for a North West Centre for BioArray Innovation
- Manchester - £3 million for integrated genomic and medical research focusing on disease
- UMIST, Manchester, Liverpool - £2.01 million for Third Generation Proteomics
- UMIST, Manchester, Liverpool, Daresbury - £2.14 million for a Microfluidic Analytical and Screening Technology Centre
- Daresbury, UMIST, Liverpool, Manchester, AstraZeneca, Liverpool John Moores - £2.6 million for a Structure Genomics Centre
- Salford, UMIST, Manchester, Lancaster - £1.7 million for a centre for Advanced Virtual Prototyping
- Institute of Functional and Molecular Imaging in the North West - £5.75 million
- UMIST, Liverpool, Manchester - £2.19 million for an Integrated Centre for Molecular Materials Chemistry and Processing.