Almost £200M investment into new accelerator-based research infrastructures announced
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) announced on 27 March 2027 that it is investing a total of £481 million into a portfolio of research and innovation infrastructures that will help maintain the UK’s position as a research and innovation superpower.
Amongst these significant investments are two particle accelerator-based research infrastructures to which experts from the Cockcroft Institute are making key contributions: The Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging (RUEDI) facility and the Electron Ion Collider (EIC).
RUEDI will be the most powerful high energy electron microscope in the world for ultrafast imaging, and the world’s fastest electron diffraction facility. The project is led by the University of Liverpool’s Professor Nigel Browning from the School of Engineering. RUEDI will be based at Daresbury laboratory and receive £124.4 million from the UKRI Infrastructure Fund. Our very own Professor Carsten P Welsch is based at the Cockcroft Institute and is leading the RUEDI scientific theme on Materials in Extremes. Professor Welsch said: “I am absolutely thrilled about this major funding announcement. RUEDI will be a unique interdisciplinary tool, allowing time-resolved studies into structural changes with unprecedented resolution.”
RUEDI Logo
The EIC is set to receive almost £60 million from UKRI in a partnership with the US Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a new collider that will help address fundamental questions on the nature of matter. This groundbreaking facility aims to uncover the inner workings of atoms by studying quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks and binding forces of nuclear particles.
Schematic drawing of the EIC, image credit: BNL.
The EIC is expected to deepen our understanding of the material universe and drive technological innovation. Professor Carsten P Welsch is Co-chair of the international EIC Accelerator Collaboration and comments: “The construction of the EIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory marks the establishment of a world-leading facility for nuclear physics. The design, construction, and future upgrades of the EIC will have many exciting scientific and technical challenges, creating opportunities for a worldwide accelerator collaboration to become part of this exciting venture. This major investment will further strengthen the US – UK collaboration.”
The long-term nature of these investments will help to maintain the UK’s key position on the world stage of research and innovation for the future. Both projects will be of key strategic importance for the Department of Physics and wider university.
You can find out more about all newly funded infrastructure projects via the following link: https://www.ukri.org/news/major-research-and-innovation-infrastructure-investment-announced/