Submitted by Administrator on Tue, 17/10/2017 - 09:28
Cavendish III
A new era for physics at Cambridge
Plans for the new Cavendish Laboratory – a new state-of-the-art facility for the University, the city and the country – are now well underway.
Planning application for the new facility, which will be located on the West Cambridge site, has been submitted, and construction is expected to being in early 2019. Bouygues UK has been selected to provide consultancy support to the University’s project team.
The new Cavendish Laboratory will be a purpose-built centre for our world-leading research, bringing all the research groups in the department under one roof to encourage collaboration.
The new building, and our new strategic plan, both represent a renaissance of the way we carry out physics research and achieve our research goals. The spirit of adventure and innovation will be fostered in the Cavendish tradition, but adapted to the new needs of frontier research.
At the heart of the new approach is a more flexible alignment of our research activities into research themes, rather than being wholly based upon the traditional group structure. This change of emphasis has been inspired by a number of changes in the nature of contemporary physics research.
In addition to serving as a home for physics research at Cambridge, the new Cavendish Laboratory will be a top-class facility for the nation – much of the specialised research equipment in the new building will be made available to other institutions. The new facility will be designed to match the more exacting standards of current research, serving the educational needs of future generations of students much better than is possible at our existing site. Capacity for public events has also been incorporated in the design, so that our extensive programme of work with schools, and with the general public, will continue to serve the local population well into the future.
The Government announced a £75 million investment in the Cavendish Laboratory as part of its Spending Review in 2015. The remainder of the core funding for the construction of the new Cavendish Laboratory has been approved, and we are looking forward to moving into our new home in 2021/22.