During the national emergency the Cockcroft Institute is trying to continue its business as efficiently and effectively as possible. After the 3 months lockdown in spring 2020, staff and students returned to working at the Daresbury Laboratory site in increasingly larger numbers. Whilst experimental operations were disrupted for a few months, the majority of these activities have now resumed whilst many other types of work are continuing online. These include our world-renowned education and training programme; software, modelling and simulation; data analysis from recent experiments, dissemination of knowledge through publications, online conferences and workshops; collaborative projects with businesses; applications of accelerators for security, healthcare and the environment; and our highly praised public engagement programmes. During the current national lockdown, most of our staff are once again working from home but we are making strenuous efforts to minimize disruption to experimental activities which we hope to carry out during much of the rest of 2021.

We understand that this is a worrying time for everyone in the country. Science has already played a major role in helping to mitigate this crisis. We are proud to be associated with accelerator staff at Diamond Light Source who have enabled X-ray crystallography studies of coronavirus and potential drugs and vaccines for its treatment.