The new Living Systems Institute (LSI) will pioneer novel approaches to understanding diseases and how they can be better diagnosed.
This will inform more effective treatment strategies for some of the most severe diseases facing humanity, spanning a broad spectrum, from chronic neurodegenerative diseases to the animal and plant diseases that threaten food security. The state-of-the-art Living Systems Building will house world-class facilities and bring together around 200 cell and molecular biologists, mathematicians, physicists, biomedical scientists and engineers. This will foster innovative, interdisciplinary research practices, and form an integrated team of scientists with complementary expertise investigating the fundamental cellular processes underlying human, animal and plant disease; translating this knowledge of ‘living systems’ into wider diagnostic and treatment applications. The Living Systems Institute will be tightly embedded in a scientific environment that is application oriented, and imbued with a sense of responsibility to translate scientific discovery into social and economic applications. It will develop novel disease treatments and additionally inform policy makers.
The new, seven-storey, 7,500m2 LSI building has been designed to embed inter-disciplinary research practice and will house 29 research groups with complementary expertise in biosciences, medicine, physics, engineering, mathematics and computer science. High-quality research laboratories, bio-imaging facilities, physics and engineering spaces, and high-performance computing will enable the Institute to be a hub for the analysis of the precise operation of living systems.
The building includes flexible lab spaces, where cell and molecular biology research will be carried out, specialist technical facilities to visualise and manipulate living cells, computational analysis of large data sets generated by genome sequencing, transcriptional profiling, proteomics, high-throughput cell biological screens, a Biological Services Unit providing state-of-the-art approved facilities for disease-related research, three instrument rooms and one large equipment room per floor, as well as staff and research offices, meeting rooms, seminar and informal meeting spaces. On 5-6 July the LSI will hold its opening symposium event, where two Nobel Laureates will deliver keynote speeches:
Sir Paul, Nurse FRS a former president of the Royal Society and now Chief Executive of the Francis Crick Institute, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2001 for his part in the discovery of protein molecules that control cell division.
German biologist Prof Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Entwicklungsbiologie, was awarded her Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for her discovery of the genes that control the development of animal embryos.
The founding director of the LSI, Professor Phillip Ingham FRS would like to invite the South West business community to attend the opening symposium on 5-6 July 2017. The event will be hosted by Professor Ingham and will provide a unique opportunity for distinguished guests to visit the £52 million new research facility, as well as meet the world-leading scientists who have joined the LSI. Registration for the event is now open
