Research Facilities
Examples of our state-of-the-art facilities
- high specification ‘clean’ rooms and world-class instrumentation for ultra-trace environmental chemistry
- Defra-licensed controlled-environment insect rearing and plant growth facilities
- facilities for molecular biology and contained GM work
- new high performance computing facilities (a 3.4 Tflop, 1.5 Tbyte machine) for data-based modelling and uncertainty estimation
- a Quantum Design Cryogenic Magnetometer (Maher)
- plant science research equipment, including RT-PCR and confocal microscopes
- two Ionicon proton transfer reaction - mass spectrometers
Examples of science we are delivering as a result
- the first 2D images of solutes in sediments (Davison, Zhang)
- visualisation of changes in soil structure during root development, using X-ray micro-computed tomography (Binley)
- elucidation of novel processes in remote oceans and Arctic snow packs, through ultra-trace analysis of organic pollutants (Halsall; Jones)
- the first in vivo assessment of plant apoplast pH changes in response to atmospheric and soil stress, using confocal microscopy (Davies)
- development of new high-field, low-temperature magnetic techniques to identify terrigenous dust in sediments, and ferrimagnets in brain cells of Alzheimer’s sufferers (Maher)
