NEW Event Photographs
Symposium in celebration of five years of the Cockcroft Institute.
The Cockcroft Institute, an international centre for particle accelerator research and development was established in 2004 via a joint collaboration agreement between the three world leading research-led universities in England’s northwest – Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster – together with two UK Research Councils CCLRC and PPARC (now merged as STFC since 2007) and the North West Development Agency (NWDA). The Institute is an international exemplar with the vision of integrating seamlessly the depth of research in the academia in particle, nuclear, photon and neutron sciences, the breadth of large scale facilities and technical skills base at national laboratories and practical development towards societal aspirations in health, energy, security and materials, through industrial collaboration. The Institute was formally opened and inaugurated in 2006 by Lord Sainsbury, the Minister of Science in the UK, accompanied by the following announcement on the website of the then UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair: “When we talk about world-class science we need look no further than the North West and the Cockcroft Institute”. Indeed, the above three universities and the Daresbury Laboratory in the north west of UK, can lay claim collectively to 32 Nobel laureates to date as past and present students, faculty, staff or facility users, two of which were for work done at the Daresbury Laboratory accelerator facilities and including the latest two in material science from the University of Manchester.
The Institute through a process of competitive national peer review in 2009 was awarded further stability and growth via an enhanced 8-year forward grant till 2017. Since its foundation, the Institute has further consolidated its partnership with academia, national laboratories and industry, has attracted aspiring scientists in emerging fields (e.g. photonics, free electron lasers, nonlinear dynamics, anti-matter research, dark matter and dark energy) as faculty to the associated universities, established global collaboration agreements with world-class international laboratories such as CERN and DESY, with universities such as Imperial College, Cambridge, Berkeley and Stanford, and industry such as e2v, Rapiscan Systems and Siemens.
As we complete the year 2011, we have brought together internationally recognised pre-eminent Nobel-calibre scientists, scientific leaders and institution builders from the UK and abroad under the Institute auspices to participate in the symposium: “Amazing Particles and Light: Exploring Matter, Energy and Vacuum”, addressing issues in the frontier of science and society today, in a celebration that will mark the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the opening of the Institute in 2006.
Please join me in the Five year Celebration of the Cockcroft Institute on the eve of the 2011 annual holiday season!
Swapan Chattopadhyay
Inaugural Director