Major Research and Innovation Infrastructure Investment for the University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool will lead a new £125 million national research facility to drive forward scientific discoveries and technological advances in areas such as sustainable energy, advanced materials, quantum technologies, and personalised medicine.
The University of Liverpool is one of NBIC’s four lead research institutions and its involvement is through the Open Innovation Hub for Antimicrobial Surfaces (OPIHAS), which is led by Professor Rasmita Raval. The hub combines interdisciplinary surface and materials science expertise with advanced imaging techniques across the physical and life sciences.
Supported by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund, the facility known as RUEDI (Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging) will be the world’s most powerful microscope for imaging dynamics and position the UK as a global leader in ultrafast electron microscopy.
The only instrument of its kind, it will have both the fastest time resolution electron microscope and the fastest time resolution electron diffraction instrument, to uniquely support UK scientific research across the core sciences. RUEDI will enable the dynamic, rather than static, study of biological and chemical processes in ‘real time’ as they happen and at the femtosecond timescale – that’s a millionth of a billionth of a second or faster.
This unique capability opens the door for researchers to explore changes in living cells as they happen to help develop more personalised treatments for patients and to find new ways of generating renewable energy and designing better batteries for a sustainable future.
It will also provide new insight to the structural integrity of materials – such as plastics, concrete and steel – during extreme conditions such as explosions, earthquakes and advanced manufacturing processes and it will help unveil the underlying phenomena that will lead to quantum computing, a new generation of computers.
RUEDI is a collaborative partnership between the University of Liverpool, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Rosalind Franklin Institute.
Starting construction in 2027 and opening in 2032, it will be located at the STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory at Sci-Tech Daresbury in the Liverpool City Region.
OPIHAS Director and NBIC Liverpool Co-Director Professor Rasmita Raval said,
“This is an exciting development, both from a science and a regional perspective. We look forward to using this revolutionary microscope to study biofilms at surfaces”.
Professor Nigel Browning, Co-lead on the project said,
“This announcement is excellent news for the University of Liverpool, for the North West region and for the UK scientific community. RUEDI is the first facility to allow the evolution of structural changes in materials to be observed and determined through time-resolved experiments, rather than by static structure. This ground-breaking capability will help researchers develop the new technologies and solutions needed to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time”.
Professor Carsten Welsch, Co-lead on the project said,
“RUEDI will be a unique interdisciplinary tool, allowing time-resolved studies into structural changes with unprecedented resolution, including biological matter”.
Read the original news article on the University of Liverpool website.