Interactions News Wire #52-09
12 October 2009 http://www.interactions.org
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Source: The Cockcroft Institute
Content: Press Release
Date Issued: 12 October 2009
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The Cockcroft Institute looks forward with 2020 Vision

Following a successful peer review and subsequent competitive national and global assessment in early 2009 by an international group of experts, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) UK has authorized the Cockcroft Institute Core Grant for renewal and extension till March 31, 2017. This will see the Cockcroft Institute awarded £20.0 M since its founding in 2004, £16.3 M of which over the next eight years till 2017.

The Cockcroft Institute (CI) is an international centre of accelerator science and technology located adjacent to the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus in Cheshire, UK. It is a partnership of the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster, STFC and the North West regional Development Agency (NWDA). Its vision is the advancement of fundamental science by means of cutting-edge research and development in the acceleration, manipulation, and delivery of beams of energetic sub-atomic particles and their associated radiation. It is to provide stewardship of the UK's deliverables to national and international accelerator projects. The institute sets a new international paradigm of collaborative research and is an innovative global exemplar in integrating academia, national research facilities, industry and local economy under one umbrella.

The STFC award comes with a welcome long term vision, enabling the Cockcroft Institute to advance discovery class science to at least 2020. It will empower the Institute to maintain and enhance its on-going fundamental research and development in particle and photon beam science and technology; to develop innovative concepts, designs and prototypes for the next generation of accelerator facilities, and to deliver complex and sophisticated components to collaborative ventures worldwide. It will also ensure the continuity of on-going advanced education and research training for the foreseeable future, thus inspiring the next generation and preserving and enhancing a critical and vibrant national skills base in accelerator science and engineering. Taken together with its emerging collaboration with advanced industry in the UK and elsewhere, the Institute will also be able to continue to develop its direct contributions to the international competitiveness of the UK in the global challenges of energy, environment, health and security.

The STFC core grant leverages heavily on substantial matching contributions from the partnering stakeholders. When taken alongside the contributions of the other four partners, the renewed STFC funding to the Cockcroft Institute to 2017, together with the on-going funding from academia, the NWDA, the STFC and the EU, amounts to a total commitment of about £100M for the period to 2017. These funds will continue to support laboratory and scientific infrastructure, operations, staff, faculty, post-doctoral researchers and students. On the basis of the initial STFC core funding from 2004, staff in the Cockcroft Institute secured additional responsive mode grants totalling approximately £12M to date from other UK research councils and EU.

The Cockcroft Institute has had many achievements since its foundation, particularly over the past three years. It has:

• Strengthened its global partnerships, having signed comprehensive collaborative Memoranda of Understanding with large international laboratories such as CERN in Europe and equivalents in USA, Canada and Asia;

• Been extremely successful in its international recruitment campaign, attracting and appointing 11 new academic faculty members to date from around the world - Germany, UK, Canada, USA, Singapore, including appointment of its Inaugural Director via an international search. Five more such appointments are now in the plans till 2012;

• Been and continues to be a global pioneer in the emerging innovative technologies for the efficient production, control and recovery of high energy particle, light and laser beams and the associated microwave energy that powers them. These innovations have acted as catalysts for discovery class science driven by novel particle collider concepts, accelerator facilities and light sources as enabling instruments in physics, chemistry, engineering, materials, bioscience and biotechnology;

• Been and continues to be a host for major leadership positions in global and national projects driven by big questions, such as understanding the very early evolution of the Universe, probing the fundamental laws of physics, exploring the nature and origin of matter at the "sub-attometric" scale and the ultra-fast dynamics of fundamental living processes;

• Pioneered new medical and energy technologies towards particle beam cancer therapy, medical diagnostic radio-isotopes and the Accelerator-Driven Sub-critical Reactors (ADSR). Emerging innovative techniques in compact linear accelerators, in microwave, terahertz and optical frequencies, and their interaction with physical and living matter, are beginning to extend the knowledge generated at the institute to applications addressing critical needs in the areas of energy, environment, health and global security.

Swapan Chattopadhyay, Director of the Cockcroft Institute said: "I am delighted at the exciting opportunities for growth now secured for the Cockcroft Institute by this award. At the same time I am also aware of the struggles faced by our colleagues in UK in the fundamental areas of particle physics, nuclear and photon sciences -the very fields that we accelerator scientists and technologists aspire to enable. At such a time, the awarding of the Cockcroft Institute core grant extension till 2017 is most welcome news. In my privileged position as the Director of the institute, it will be one of my priorities to share our efforts and add value to the above scientific fields in the most optimised fashion achievable."

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For more information contact:

Prof. Swapan Chattopadhyay ( swapan@cockcroft.ac.uk ) or
Prof. John Dainton ( j.b.dainton@cockcroft.ac.uk )

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Notes to editors

Professor Swapan Chattopadhyay has been the Inaugural Director of the Cockcroft Institute since April 17, 2007 and holds concurrently the very first Chair in accelerator science in UK, the Sir John Cockcroft Chair of Physics at the three premier research-led universities in England's northwest - Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster -- who are partners in the institute.

The Cockcroft Institute was officially inaugurated in 2006 by the then UK Minister of Science Lord Sainsbury.