Full infrastructure projects
Adolescent Health Study: a step change for adolescence research
Funding
£61.9 million over 12 years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
The Adolescent Health Study is a unique study that will follow over 100,000 adolescents (eight to 18 years of age), gathering data about their health and lifestyle for a minimum of 10 years.
It will provide unparalleled biological and real-time lifestyle data during a key life period of rapid mental and physical development and explore the health of adolescents in the 2020s and in a post-COVID-19 world.
Data will be gathered through modern innovative sampling methods. Biological samples will be collected to create the world’s largest collection of hormonal and inflammatory markers in this key age group.
Investment in this study will give the UK science community a competitive advantage in understanding critical population trajectories and prevention of health and social problems that have their roots in early life or adolescence.
BioFAIR
Funding
£34 million over five years. £17 million from the Infrastructure Fund; £17 million from Digital Research Infrastructure programme.
Anticipated project start date: 2024.
About the project
BioFAIR is a digital infrastructure for biological and biomedical sciences.
It will enhance the sharing, management, and reuse of life sciences data by assembling, hosting, and operating a coherent set of digital registries, repositories, data management and analysis services for UK users. It will bridge the gap between researchers, institutional data repositories, and existing data infrastructures. The result will be improved availability and usability of data that is currently scattered across repositories.
The ability to manage and access large amounts of data in a consistent and accessible format will democratise access to data; accelerate discovery; and enable a real step change for many fields of life sciences, ranging from synthetic biology and industrial biotechnology, to plant sciences.
This project is linked to the BioFAIR scoping study, and funding is subject to business case approvals.
C-MASS UK
Funding
£49.35 million over five years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Anticipated project start date: 2026.
About the project
C-MASS is a national hub-and-spoke infrastructure that will integrate and advance the UK’s capability in mass spectrometry (MS), enabling rapid methodological advances, large-scale screening and accelerated data access and sharing.
Recent developments in high-throughput and high-precision MS have precipitated a 50-fold increase in MS capacity and sensitivity. The proposed national infrastructure, which will be established through open competition, will harness these developments to deliver a step-change in the utility of UK MS by investing in cutting-edge instrumentation at spoke laboratories collaborating on challenges that require critical mass to deliver.
Spokes will be connected by a coordinating C-MASS central hub that will that also establish a central metadata catalogue. Collectively this will provide unparalleled access to data and will be a critical health resource for the UK.
Funding is subject to business case approvals.
CoSTAR: a national infrastructure for creative research and innovation
Funding
£69.3 million over eight years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
CoSTAR is a new creative facility for the UK’s renowned screen, gaming and performance sectors.
The state-of-the-art facility will support fast-growing creative industries to develop new products and experiences.
It will comprise a central hub and experimental studio fitted with real-time digital technologies such as motion and volumetric capture. These, and other advanced technologies, will allow the viewer to rotate or move around in what appears to be a three-dimensional space.
The central hub will be enhanced by a network of regional labs across the UK.
Diamond-II
Funding
£296.6 million over eight years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Wellcome Trust. It is located at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire.
It harnesses the power of electrons to produce an intense beam of light that can be used like a giant microscope.
Diamond II will deploy a transformative new technology to provide a 70-fold improvement in the brightness of its light beams.
This will open up wholly new insights into materials research, as well as increasing throughput to accelerate materials discovery or drug development. In addition, it will offer real-time insights into processes such as advanced manufacturing and the performance of next-generation batteries.
This project is linked to the Diamond II scoping study.
DiSSCo UK
Funding
£155.6 million over 10 years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Anticipated project start date: 2026.
About the project
The Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK (DiSSCo UK) is a national infrastructure for the digitisation and research exploitation of the UK’s natural science collections.
There are more than 137 million natural science specimens held in the UK’s natural history museums, botanic gardens, and collection-holding universities. The scientific, commercial and societal potential of these collections is currently constrained by the limits of physical access and variable rates of digitisation.
DiSSCo UK will address this by rapidly digitising the UK’s available specimens and unifying them under a specialist national digital infrastructure.
Delivery will be led by the Natural History Museum (the UK node of DiSSCo EU) and follow a hub-and-spoke model.
Funding is subject to business case approvals.
Early Life Cohort: a next generation longitudinal data infrastructure for the UK
Funding
£37 million over seven years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2024.
About the project
The UK is renowned for its world-leading birth cohort studies, stretching back to the 1940s. The new Early Life Cohort (ELC) will understand the generation of children being born in a distinctly different, post-COVID-19 era, setting the foundation for studying its life-long consequences.
The ELC will follow children and their families across all aspects of their everyday lives from soon after birth.
This novel data infrastructure will transform our understanding of UK society and will provide answers to questions around the impact of the following factors on children’s experiences and outcomes:
- inequalities
- environment
- social media
Electron-Ion Collider
Funding
£58.8 million over nine years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Anticipated project start date: to be confirmed.
About the project
The project will develop new detector and accelerator infrastructure to address fundamental questions on the nature of matter at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).
EIC will be a major new particle accelerator facility built at the Brookhaven National Laboratory near New York in the US. EIC’s electron beam will reveal the arrangement of the quarks (elementary particles) and gluons (messenger or binding particles) that make up the protons and neutrons of nuclei.
In doing so, it will revolutionise our understanding of the ‘strong nuclear force’ that holds quarks together, carried by the gluons, which is one of the four fundamental forces of nature and accounts for more than 99% of the visible mass of the Universe.
The full international project was initiated by the US Department of Energy and has an approved budget of $2.4 billion.
Funding is subject to business case approvals.
EMBL-EBI: Data Resources for the Life Sciences Phase 2
Funding
£80.7 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2024.
About the project
The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), is home to the world’s most comprehensive range of freely available biological data stores, analysis tools and dissemination resources.
With the volume and diversity of data deposited continuing to grow rapidly, this investment is required to transform EMBL-EBI’s current capacity. It will also support the development of new data platforms and portals to address global priorities, such as:
- antimicrobial resistance
- sustainable agriculture
- biodiversity loss
Endeavour: next generation capability for the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Funding
£73.5 million over 10 years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
Endeavour will provide new instruments and significant upgrades of several others at STFC’s ISIS, a national multidisciplinary facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire.
ISIS uses pulses of particles called neutrons and muons to study the structure and dynamics of materials on an atomic scale.
The Endeavour instruments will further ISIS’ international scope, attracting global talent and encouraging further international investment.
Endeavour will enable research in areas such as:
- materials for the future
- smart material
- flexible and clean energy technologies
- advanced manufacturing
- biosciences and healthcare
Floods and Droughts Research Infrastructure (FDRI)
Funding
£38 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Anticipated project start date: 2024.
About the project
The Floods and Droughts Research Infrastructure will be a world-leading observation network and sensor innovation test bed to mitigate the impacts of floods and droughts in the UK.
This ‘hub and spoke’ infrastructure will deliver the first UK-wide, catchment-scale monitoring facility. It will provide observations at scales previously not possible to reduce uncertainty in key hydrological processes.
FDRI will enhance scientific understanding of hydrological processes to help meet the demands of adapting to a changing climate.
This will improve the UK’s resilience to extreme hydrological events and support the development of tools to underpin evidence-based policy and decision making.
Funding is subject to business case approvals.
HiLUX
Funding
£17.2 million over four years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
HiLUX is a major upgrade of the ultrafast laser and infrared spectrometer infrastructure at STFC’s Central Laser Facility, located at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire.
This investment will extend the range of the UK’s suite of resources for ultrafast spectroscopy. This is a technique that uses sequences of ultrashort light pulses to study processes in atoms, molecules, or materials that occur in millionths of a billionth of a second or faster.
Taking advantage of recent developments in advanced laser, detector, and computational technology, HiLUX offers a unique opportunity for UK research and industry communities to move beyond the current limit of existing technology. It could greatly reduce timescales to results in the disciplines of:
- photovoltaics
- batteries
- fuel cells
- catalysis
- energy-efficient electronics
- drug design
- development and screening
- artwork preservation
Hyper-Kamiokande
Funding
£15.5 million over seven years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
Being constructed 650 metres underground in Japan, Hyper-K is an international science experiment to unlock the mysteries of the Universe’s evolution.
It is both a microscope for measuring the properties of neutrinos and a telescope for observing the sun and supernovas.
John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Laboratory Next Generation Infrastructure
Funding
£317.7 million over 10 years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
The John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich are internationally recognised centres of excellence in plant and microbial science.
This investment will transform the existing capabilities of both centres via new and shared interdisciplinary research facilities with a goal for the facility to be net zero.
Integrating these capabilities will address research challenges including:
- genetic crop improvement strategies
- reducing greenhouse gas emissions through soil health
- understanding plant-microbe interactions to develop clinical treatments to improve human health
Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) 2030+
Funding
£49.4 million over eight years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Anticipated project start date: 2026.
About the project
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle collider, used to increase our understanding of matter and of the origins of the universe.
The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment is set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and build the universe we inhabit today.
The LHCb 2030+ will be an upgrade to this world-leading facility. It will include a new experimental facility with major enhancements to its subdetectors that will allow a step change in precision for particle physics. This will provide opportunities for scientific discoveries for at least the next 20 years.
Funding is subject to business case approvals.
National facility for ultra-high field (11.7T) human MRI scanning
Funding
£29.1 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
The national facility for ultra-high field human MRI scanning will provide the research community with the highest performance MRI scanning technology currently available.
This will drive new insights into brain functionality and the mechanisms of human disease.
This national facility, to be based at the University of Nottingham, will provide the UK with a unique capability to understand and exploit ultra-high field human MRI scanning technologies.
In addition, it will enable new research into fields such as neuroscience that could not have been achieved using existing technologies.
National Wind Tunnels Facility+ (NWTF+)
Funding
£23 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2024.
About the project
NWTF+ is a distributed network of world-leading wind tunnels which will transform UK capability in fluid dynamics.
Wind tunnels are precision instruments that produce a stream of fluid at a constant speed in a repeatable test environment that allow researchers to replicate real-life problems.
Working in parallel with computational methods, data modelling and AI, NWTF+ will make use of multiple fluid types to address major international challenges as varied as:
- the erosion of offshore renewable foundations and coastlines
- particle transmission of diseases, such as COVID-19
- the generation of net zero technologies, including new fuels for H2 transport
- advances in hypersonic aerospace applications
The science of fluid flow forms is a key enabling technology and NWTF+ will maintain and enhance the UK’s research leadership in this pioneering field.
Funding is subject to appropriate assurance processes.
1.2 GHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectrometer
Funding
£17.6 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
The ultra-high field 1.2 GHz NMR system will provide our researchers and industrialists with access to the highest performance available in NMR globally, both in terms of sensitivity and resolution.
This will be for use by UK researchers and businesses across the physical and life-sciences to study molecules to improve the design of new drugs and materials and design new forms of clean energy.
Population Research UK (PRUK)
Funding
£9 million over seven years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
The UK has a world-leading population study portfolio studying individuals over their lives, spanning more than 70 years.
The investment in PRUK will transform the impact of this data by developing digital tools to integrate the UKs longitudinal datasets with other health and administrative information.
The result will be an acceleration of multidisciplinary population research that could provide insight into profound socioeconomic and health challenges, such as:
- rebuilding from recession
- understanding pandemics such as COVID-19
- capturing changing social attitudes and lifestyles
Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging (RUEDI)
Funding
£124.4 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Anticipated project start date: 2026.
About the project
RUEDI will be a globally unique national user facility for the direct observation of fundamental dynamic structural and chemical processes.
It will be the only high-brightness ultrafast imaging facility in the world and the world’s fastest electron diffraction facility, providing the UK with significant competitive advantage to observe, quantify and understand irreversible ultrafast processes.
RUEDI will be distinct from previous accelerators in that structural changes will be determined through time-resolved experiments (meaning, in real time), rather than by static structure.
Through direct observation of atomic or electronic motions in fundamental biological and chemical reactions, UK scientists will be provided with unprecedented capabilities to deliver transformative innovations in areas as diverse as personalised medicine, energy storage (both grid and transportation), and materials operating under extreme conditions.
Funding is subject to business case approvals.
Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS)
Funding
£59.5 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
RICHeS will be a network of facilities and expertise in the interdisciplinary field of heritage science.
It will create clusters of excellence, unlocking the potential for heritage assets to contribute to innovation in areas such as:
- digital twins
- artificial intelligence
- robotics
- bioimaging
As a ‘hub and spoke’ infrastructure, it brings together over 50 UK heritage organisations and provides them with access to state of the art infrastructure to analyse, digitise and archive our national treasures.
By creating an ecosystem in which multidisciplinary research and innovation can happen at scale, RICHeS will drive innovation both in the preservation and understanding of heritage and beyond.
Full funding is subject to business case approvals.
Simons Observatory (SO:UK)
Funding
£17.9 million over nine years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2022.
About the project
SO:UK is an array of three telescopes designed to perform very precise observations of the cosmic microwave background, electromagnetic radiation which is a remnant from the big bang.
Operating from Chile as part of the US-led Simons Observatory (SO), SO:UK will be a major upgrade to an existing international observatory.
It will search for primordial gravitational waves and address central questions in fundamental physics, such as:
- early behaviour of dark energy
- the formation of intergalactic clusters and galaxies
This investment supports a new US-UK collaboration in a high-profile area of fundamental physics.
It will secure the UK as a major partner in an international project.
Smart Data Research UK
Funding
£49.3 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
People’s interactions with the world and each other are increasingly digital.
Smart Data Research UK will be a transformative infrastructure enabling and accelerating the creation, access, and analysis of digital footprint data including:
- internet and social media
- geospatial
- commercial and transactional
- sensor and image data
The research will address national challenges, such as:
- the implications of our online lives
- building back stronger, productivity, growth and prosperity
- net zero
- changing populations, transport and mobility
Smart Data Research UK will support pressing research and policy questions in the social sciences raised by a post-COVID-19 society facing challenge and opportunity and will help deliver the government’s National Data Strategy.
The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO)
Funding
£66.7 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
The SKAO’s telescopes, based in South Africa and Australia, will be the world’s largest radio telescope and the largest scientific instrument on the planet once construction is complete.
The telescopes will investigate the development of the early universe in more detail than ever before and will have the broadest science range of any previous facility. Some of the main SKAO science drivers include:
- galaxy evolution, cosmology and dark energy
- the cradle of life
- cosmic dawn
With SKAO headquarters at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, this investment will cement the UK’s role as host and contribute to the construction phase of the telescopes.
Total Body PET platform
Funding
£32.1 million over seven years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a non-invasive imaging technique that may detect the early onset of diseases before other imaging tests can.
This new total body PET scanner, with two new state of the art facilities and associated radiochemistry centres, will represent the first head to toe PET infrastructure in Europe.
This will be underpinned by an advanced data management platform to facilitate sharing of PET images across academic and industry communities, managed by a team based in the Medicines Discovery Catapult in Cheshire.
This new PET technology is 40 times more sensitive and has a faster scan time, enabling three times as many scans per day and significantly decreased radiation exposure to patients.
UKRI Airborne Laboratory
Funding
£49 million over five years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
The UK’s Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) is a flying laboratory that enables scientists to track and evaluate:
- pollution
- severe weather
- the effects of climate change
The aircraft analyses the atmosphere and monitors air pollution levels over UK and international skies. It has:
- tracked dangerous gases caused by volcanic eruptions
- surveyed drought in Africa
This investment will upgrade the aircraft’s scientific equipment which will continue to support environmental scientists for the next 18 years.
UK Biobank Phase 2
Funding
£127.6 million over 10 years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
UK Biobank is one of the most important resources for population health in the world. This vast biomedical database collects genetic and health data from half a million individuals in the UK who have been followed for 10 years.
UK Biobank Phase 2 will replace the outdated infrastructure with faster, higher capacity and lower energy sample storage to significantly accelerate health discovery science.
This upgrade, located in Manchester, will:
- enable Biobank to meet the rising demand from UK and international researchers
- build on existing relationships with global pharma and data science companies
- continue to attract industry investment
Vulcan 2020: Science in Extremes
Funding
£59.7 million over six years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
Vulcan 2020, based at STFC’s Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire, will be the highest power civilian laser in the world. 10 times more energy, 20 times more powerful and 100 times more intense than any other laser of its kind.
Lasers are used by researchers for many applications, from understanding the stars in the universe to studying nuclear reactors.
The huge increase in power and intensity in Vulcan 2020 will allow researchers to observe the effects of core state chemistry for the first time and draws us closer to the secrets of the cosmos.
Scoping projects
Boulby Underground Laboratory: Dark Matter and Beyond scoping project
Funding
£2.8 million over four years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2022.
About the project
Located in the north-east of England 1.1km underground, STFC’s Boulby Laboratory is one of the only laboratories in the world that can offer experimental space with vastly reduced levels of interference from natural background radiation and cosmic-ray particles.
This provides researchers with safe access to the unique deep underground geology and environment that can be used to advance scientific understanding across several disciplines including:
- earth and environmental sciences
- biosciences
- astrobiology
- planetary exploration studies
The scoping project will consider whether Boulby could host a major international next-generation dark matter or neutrino detector post-2030.
CO2 Storage Laboratory: Phase 2 scoping project
Funding
£2 million over two years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2022.
About the project
This is the second phase of a scoping study to develop plans for a facility to safely store CO2 deep underground on an industrial scale.
The study is looking at developing new technologies and equipment to improve monitoring, reduce costs and further enhance safe storage.
The facility will be located in an appropriate geological setting, for example in the north-east of England, and will position the UK as a global leader in clean growth.
Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) scoping project
Funding
£2.9 million over three years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
The EIC will be built at Brookhaven Lab in the US. It will be a particle accelerator that collides electrons with protons and nuclei to look inside those particles and study their internal structure, to better understand the nature of matter.
This scoping project will position the UK to lead the future development of cutting-edge detector technologies for the EIC.
Future Marine Research Infrastructure (FMRI), Accelerating Adoption of Marine Sensor Innovation
Funding
£4 million over two years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2024.
About the project
This project will de-risk and test the feasibility of rapidly integrating and deploying biogeochemical sensor technologies with National Marine Equipment Pool marine autonomous platforms.
It will test the integration of sensors into autonomous platforms, undertake collection of biogeochemical marine data via autonomous platforms with multiple sensors in a real-world validation trial, and automate data processing according to the FAIR principles.
Project results will contribute to the development of an environmentally friendly and economically sustainable infrastructure for current and future cutting-edge marine research.
Ion Therapy Research Facility scoping project
Funding
£2 million over three years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2022.
About the project
This scoping study will develop the specification and costs for a pioneering, national radiobiology facility intended to conduct the basic research needed to develop and apply the next generation of ion beams for radiotherapy.
Beams of positively-charged atoms such as carbon ions deposit their radiotherapeutic dose in quite different ways to the X-rays and protons presently available in the UK for cancer treatments; combined with new delivery methods, ions can potentially be used to treat tumours that are resistant to current techniques.
Combining developments in medical accelerator technology and sample delivery, this facility will help the UK be at the forefront of the research required for the next generation of radiotherapy treatment.
ISIS-II feasibility, design studies and research and development.
Funding
£5.1 million over four years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
The ISIS Neutron and Muon Source is based at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, on the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire.
It produces beams of neutrons and muons that allow scientists to study materials at the atomic level using a suite of instruments, often described as ‘super-microscopes’.
This scoping funding will enable feasibility and design studies on the proton driver and target system architecture required to develop a next generation neutron facility in decades to come.
Next-gen GW: the next generation gravitational wave infrastructure
Funding
£8 million over four years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
Gravitational wave observatories use laser-based precision sensors to measure tiny distortions in spacetime called gravitational waves (GW). This is a radical new way of observing astronomical objects like blackholes that cannot be studied with traditional astronomical instruments, such as telescopes.
The global next-generation GW observatory infrastructure, with nodes in Europe and the US, will have a transformative reach and will be capable of observing gravitational wave signals out to the edge of the Universe. There is no equivalent infrastructure, current or planned, anywhere in the world.
This scoping project will enable conceptual design of instrumental and computational technologies to enable UK leadership in next-generation GW infrastructure.
Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging (RUEDI) scoping project
Funding
£3 million over three years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2021.
About the project
This funding will investigate the design of a new national facility for materials, the RUEDI centre, based at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory.
RUEDI will be a facility unique in the UK and globally, capable of observing how structural changes occur within different materials using electrons for diffraction patterns and images.
It will support advances in areas as diverse as:
- personalised medicine
- energy storage
- clean growth
- materials operating under extreme conditions
UK ELT: the next generation instrumentation suite for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT)
Funding
£6.8 million over three years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2023.
About the project
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) commissions and operates some of the largest ground-based astronomical telescopes in the world. The ELT, currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile, will be the biggest optical and infrared telescope ever built and will explore the Universe in unprecedented depth and detail.
After the ELT’s mirrors have collected, corrected, and stabilised the light from astronomical objects, ELT’s state-of-the-art instrumentation suite will analyse this data, allowing astronomers to observe and study the cosmos in a unique way.
The ELT is an international endeavour delivered by ESO’s 16 member states, together with the host state Chile and Australia as a strategic partner. This scoping project will enable essential design and development work to secure UK participation in and leadership of the development of next-generation instrumentation for ELT.
PhenomUK scoping project
Funding
£2.4 million over three years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2022.
About the project
This scoping study will address challenges of crop resilience and global food security through a national distributed infrastructure in plant and crop phenotyping.
This will take advantage of the diverse expertise, facilities and variety of field sites (with differing soil and environmental conditions) across the UK.
It will support the development of testbeds for trialling new crop varieties, including higher yield varieties, climate resistant varieties, and testing response to pathogens.
X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL): conceptual design and options analysis
Funding
£3.2 million over four years from the Infrastructure Fund.
Project start date: 2022.
About the project
This conceptual design study will explore different options to provide access to a second generation XFEL capability for UK science and innovation.
XFELs are large machines that produce coherent X-rays and can be used to study matter simultaneously on spatial and temporal scales.
Such capability allows for a wide range of cutting edge multidisciplinary applications across science and technology, for instance:
- bioscience and healthcare: mapping atomic details of viruses and supporting drug discovery
- net zero growth: providing new approaches for low-cost energy generation and storage technologies
- technology: developing new and advanced materials with direct applicability to:
- industry
- mobility
- digital manufacturing
- nuclear energy
- defence
- fundamental science:offering new processes to study the interior of planets
Completed scoping projects
CO2 Storage Testbed scoping project, £0.4 million
This scoping study developed options for a UK CO2 Storage Testbed. It aimed to de-risk subsurface CO2 storage and address research and innovation questions regarding the long-term operation and management of geological CO2 storage. It:
- engaged widely with stakeholders to fully understand requirements
- reviewed the national and international capability
- proposed a science plan for a future national facility
Diamond-II scoping project
Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron, funded by STFC and the Wellcome Trust and located at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at the Harwell Campus, Oxfordshire.
It harnesses the power of electrons to produce an intense beam of light that can be used like a giant microscope.
This scoping project will develop the technical design for a transformative upgrade of the synchrotron required to offer a 70-fold improvement in the brightness of the light, increasing performance through:
- speed of observations
- resolution of images
- sensitivity of chemical analysis
This scoping study will help to inform the major Diamond II infrastructure project.
Floods and Droughts Resilience (FDR) scoping project, £0.3 million
This award funded a scoping project to investigate the requirements for a new national floods and droughts resilience infrastructure.
This infrastructure would provide a world-leading observation network and a sensor innovation testbed, enabling research that will contribute to the to mitigation impacts of flood and drought in the UK.
A consortium was led by:
- the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
- British Geological Survey
- Imperial College London
- University of Bristol
National Preclinical Phenotyping Platform (N3Ps) – Design Study, £2.2 million
The National Preclinical Phenotyping scoping project produced a design for a facility to enable efficient and effective preclinical trials that would be accessible by academia and industry.
Service Robotics Proving Ground scoping project, £0.5 million
This design study supported development of the Robotics Proving Ground, an internationally recognised facility in the UK that tests advanced robots to their limits against one of:
- rigorous standardised performance evaluations
- bespoke tests to meet specific customer needs
- less structured experimentation
The facility will be focused on advanced service robotics or ‘robots in the wild’. These navigate complex and often unstructured environments, including public spaces, rather than being manufacturing and assembly robotic arms already common in factories.
Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS), £0.2 million
This award funded a scoping study and community engagement to explore options for a distributed Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS).
Project funding status
In May 2022, the three-year £481 million investment, made from UKRI’s Infrastructure Fund, was confirmed by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Kwasi Kwarteng as part of UKRI’s detailed three-year budget allocation.
The full UKRI Infrastructure Fund investment in this portfolio is estimated to be £2.1 billion including subsequent years.
Given the high value of a number of these projects, many of the investments will be subject to business case and further approvals, which is standard practice to ensure the responsible use of public money.
