The Cockcroft Institute celebrates three major milestones
This week, the Cockcroft Institute for Accelerator Science and Technology has celebrated its partnership, new core funding and new laboratories and office space as it relocated to its new building in the heart of STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory.
With the accession of the University of Strathclyde to full membership of the CI, the institute has grown very significantly and it has gained a number of additional and complementary skills which allow the institute to tackle an even broader range of accelerator R&D challenges.
The commencement of the Institute’s new STFC core funding provides important support for the institute to pursue its research goals. Across its four stakeholder universities, the institute will continue to be supported by STFC with more than £2M of funding per year.
Finally, moving on to the main Daresbury Laboratory site brings members of the Cockcroft Institute and its PhD students conveniently closer to the world leading particle accelerator research facilities, most notably ‘VELA’, which is making world leading accelerator technology available to UK industry, and ‘CLARA’, which is meeting the technological challenges that are paving the way for the UK’s next generation of accelerator technology.
Professor Carsten Welsch, Head of the Physics Department and the Liverpool Accelerator Science Group, said: “The Cockcroft Institute has come a long way since its foundation more than 10 years ago. With renewed core funding, new facilities and the additional expertise at the University of Strathclyde we are now even better placed to carry out accelerator R&D at the cutting edge of science and technology. The Liverpool group has initiated and coordinated a number of large scale research projects such as oPAC, OMA and AVA which have been vital for the success of the institute.”
This special event was well attended by delegates from all CI stakeholders, external collaboration partners, representatives of STFC – and three generations of the Cockcroft family. It saw presentations by key scientists, outreach demonstrations, and tours of the on-campus accelerator facilities.
Cockcroft Institute
The Cockcroft Institute (CI) is the national center for particle accelerator R&D in the UK, and probably the largest of its kind in the world. It delivers world-class R&D in frontier accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider or Free Electron Lasers, as well as in very high gradient, so-called ‘novel accelerators’.
Furthermore, the institute’s cross-cutting applications program allows this expertise to be used to address global challenges in health, security, energy, manufacturing and the environment, and to train the next generation of accelerator experts in areas where there is a recognized international skills shortage.
The CI is a partnership between the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester and Strathclyde, and the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The core membership comprises the accelerator physics & engineering groups of the partner universities and the Accelerator Science & Technology Centre (ASTeC) of STFC at Daresbury Laboratory, and numbers well over 200 academics, professional accelerator staff, post-doctoral research associates, admin staff and PhD students. The Liverpool accelerator group currently has more around 40 members.
