UK Research and Innovation Campuses

Helping to build a brighter future

We have a vision:
to lead the development of diverse, cutting edge UK Research and Innovation Campuses that contribute to global innovation and impact. Our strategy builds on the strong foundations of research centred within BBSRCs strategically funded research institutes, which are embedded in a number of separate and distinctive campuses and underpin key sectors of the UK economy such as agriculture, food and drink, bioenergy, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. By bringing scientists and businesses together in these innovation hot spots our goal is to enable excellent research to deliver the widest benefits locally, nationally and internationally as well as helping to meet global challenges surrounding food security, energy security and lifelong health and wellbeing.

I am an ardent believer that investment in research and national research infrastructure is the best way to generate long-term economic growth.
Professor Douglas Kell, BBSRC Chief Executive

Recent government investment of 44M is helping to create and support new companies and jobs based on world-leading bioscience at Babraham Research Campus.

Copyright Babraham Institute

Our ambition for the future

BBSRC has a clear role in helping to maintain the UKs position as one of the best places in the world to do bioscience research. In addition, our goal is to enable the exciting and successful application of the outcomes of this research to deliver the widest benefit to the UK and more widely. This includes contributing to the creation of the best possible environment for enterprise and innovation in the life science sector. We provide strategic funding to eight research institutes, based at six separate and distinctive campuses across the UK. The Institutes are a major component in delivering BBSRCs strategic priorities: food security, bioenergy and industrial biotechnology, and basic bioscience underpinning health. These six developing UK Research and Innovation Campuses, with the institutes embedded within them, make a key contribution to the UK innovation ecosystem and environment for innovation. They help to enable economic growth, assure national security, contribute to interactions with important international trading partners and support key economic sectors. We are actively working with others to look at the opportunities for further developing bioscience-focussed Research and Innovation Campuses in order to optimise their contribution to innovation in the UK and more widely. We are also working to lead thinking on understanding and capturing the ways in which these investments bring benefits to the economy. Since 2011, BBSRC has secured significant capital investment in our Research and Innovation Campuses with Government announcements of investment totalling more than 180M.

By enabling creative investment and developments across the campuses we believe that we can drive even greater impact from innovative bioscience research, and achieve the widest possible benefits for the economy and society.
Dr Celia Caulcott, BBSRC Director of Innovation and Skills

Next generation sequencing technologies, such as those at The Genome Analysis Centre on Norwich Research Park, have huge potential to contribute to global issues that require solutions based on excellent bioscience.

Copyright Norwich Research Park

Babraham Research Campus

A leading hub of biomedical innovation in the heart of the Cambridge cluster, Babraham Research Campus plays a key role in supporting the regions life-sciences network and early-stage biomedical enterprises. At its core is the Babraham Institute, which receives strategic funding from BBSRC. The Institute has a world-leading reputation in research aimed at generating new knowledge of the biological mechanisms underpinning lifelong health and wellbeing, particularly in the areas of cell signalling, immunology, neuroscience and epigenetics. As well as its proximity to academic centres of excellence, Babraham Research Campus offers flexible, high quality facilities, providing the capacity and services needed by growing enterprises as they expand their R&D operations. 88 companies have passed through Babrahams bioincubator facilities to date, raising over 410M in equity finance between them. The latest bioincubator building opened on schedule in March 2012, bringing the lab space available on campus to nearly 8,000m2, and has achieved full occupancy within 12 months.
Copyright Babraham Institute

In 2011, the Government awarded BBSRC 44M to invest in Babraham Research Campus to further deliver innovation from the research base, generate economic growth and create jobs. Developments include:  A fifth new bioincubator building (opened March 2012)  Two new follow-on laboratories (one chemistry, one biology)  Improvements to infrastructure including roads and utilities  Improved access for campus companies to on site research-led facilities and capabilities Construction and delivery of these new facilities is progressing rapidly, on schedule and within budget.

Funding boost for Institute spin-out

In 2009, Crescendo Biologics, a spin-out company from the Babraham Institute raised 4.5M in seed funding to advance the development of fragment antibody technology platforms for the development of novel therapeutics.

Copyright Babraham Institute

Norwich Research Park

A partnership between BBSRC, four research institutes, the University of East Anglia, the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital and the John Innes Foundation, the Norwich Research Park has one of Europes largest single-site concentrations of research strengths in agrifood, health and environmental sciences. The Park is home to four world-renowned institutes the John Innes Centre, the Institute of Food Research, The Genome Analysis Centre (which all receive strategic funding from BBSRC) and the Sainsbury Laboratory as well as over 30 science and IT-based companies. Its vibrant researchled community is working in integrated, multidisciplinary teams to address global challenges of the 21st century: lifelong health and wellbeing, food security, energy security and living with environmental change.

Opening in spring 2014, the Centrum building will become a hub for Norwich Research Park, providing meeting and seminar rooms, exhibition and networking space, and a 130 seat restaurant and caf, together with 2,300m2 of highly flexible and customisable laboratory and office accommodation.

Copyright Norwich Research Park

In 2011, the Government awarded BBSRC 26M to invest in Norwich Research Park to deliver innovation from the research base and generate economic growth and job creation. The investment will help to create and support new companies and jobs based on world-leading bioscience with developments to the Park including:  New Centrum Building and commercial space  New Enterprise Centre  Improvements to Norwich Research Park infrastructure  Improvements to public highways  High specification IT infrastructure to support the needs of the campus users

Super broccoli

When a variety of super broccoli was launched onto selected UK supermarket shelves in 2011, it represented a special achievement for UK bioscience a consumer-focused, nutritionally-enhanced product developed through a collaboration spanning more than two decades.

BeneforteTM broccoli, developed using conventional breeding techniques, was born from research on the fundamental biology of plants and the link  Shared access between human nutrition and health at the to researchJohn Innes Centre and the Institute of led facilities and Food Research, respectively. capabilities across the Park
Copyright IFR

Pirbright Research and Innovation Campus

Based in Surrey, The Pirbright Institute is a unique national centre whose highly specialised facilities, and the research carried out therein, are central to safeguarding UK national security by providing the capability to control, contain and eliminate viral diseases of livestock. The impact of the Institutes research is acknowledged around the globe and Pirbright is the hub of many international research networks and partnerships as well as being a major provider of diagnostic services, expert analysis and advice to national and international organisations. The combination of innovative basic and applied research at the Institute continues to result in new vaccines and diagnostics in partnership with commercial companies. In addition, their training programmes contribute to the development of highly skilled people for UK bioscience businesses and to overseas trainees who then work more effectively to combat viral diseases in their native countries.

Copyright The Pirbright Institute

With the announcement in 2011 of a 100M+ investment to support the second phase of development of the Pirbright campus, in addition to the 100M+ cuttingedge high containment facilities due to open in 2014, BBSRC and The Pirbright Institute are taking forward an ambitious plan to develop a UK Research and Innovation Campus which will be an unrivalled resource, both nationally and internationally, for researchers and industry across the animal health sector and beyond.

Beating disease outbreaks

Pirbright scientists played a key role in the successful vaccination campaign that enabled the UK to become bluetongue free in 2008, which, as a consequence, has been estimated to have saved 485M and 10,000 jobs. The team are currently involved in researching the Schmallenburg virus, which causes birth defects in new-born lambs. The aim is to confirm whether the virus is transmitted by biting insects and also to contribute to the development of new diagnostic tests.
Hemera, copyright Thinkstock 2012

Expanding the Vision

BBSRC is actively working with key partners and stakeholders of the three other potential UK Research and Innovation Campus sites which are home to research institutes supported by BBSRC strategic funding. These institutes are:  The Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh  Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, part of Aberystwyth University  Rothamsted Research, Hertfordshire This work has been given additional impetus following the announcement, in Autumn 2012, of additional capital funding from the Government to BBSRC for the further development of Research and Innovation Campuses. Researchers from The Roslin Institute were part of a team of UK scientists that produced genetically modified chickens unable to spread bird flu. This work is part of a growing portfolio of research that The Roslin Institute is undertaking with the aim of improving the health and welfare of chickens. In January 2013, work began on the construction of the 14M National Avian Research Facility (NARF) at the University of Edinburghs Easter Bush Campus. Due for completion late 2014, the resources at NARF will be made available to national and international researchers and the facility will provide The Roslin Institute and its partners with an outstanding environment for undertaking studies that will lead to major improvements in poultry production.

Copyright The Roslin Institute

The Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) provides a unique research base that supports food security, bioenergy, and sustainable land use all of which face a range of conflicting demands, both now and in a future of predicted climate change. With the recent opening of the National Plant Phenomics Centre (NPCC), IBERS will continue to translate research into commercially successful plant breeding programmes that have considerable impact on farms. The NPPC is unique within the UK and is the future of agricultural and horticultural science, where thousands of plants physical characteristics are automatically measured on a cyber-industrial scale and recorded digitally. Scientists will use these data to ask questions about plant characteristics everything from growth rate to water use to formation useful metabolites and how these physical parameters are affected by genes, the environment and the interplay between the two. When it becomes fully operational in 2013, the NPPC will provide data faster and without the bias of the human hand. And by facilitating breeding and gene identification, this will accelerate the production of improved cereal varieties but could be used to improve almost any crop.
Copyright IBERS

Rothamsted Research (RRes) is the longest running agricultural research station in the world. Some of the field experiments that were started in the 19th century are still going today. Yet they have maintained their scientific and agricultural relevance as well as providing a unique archive of soil, crop, treatment and meteorological data going back over 150 years. Rothamsted combines this deep knowledge of agronomy, soil science and agro-ecology with modern systems biology and biotechnology in order to continue to deliver knowledge and innovation to policymakers, manufacturers and the farming community both in the UK and overseas. Indeed, the Institute has a strong reputation for sharing its research excellence for the benefit of agriculture in developing countries through longterm strategic partnerships. Rothamsted has a comprehensive strategy to develop innovative solutions to increase crop productivity and quality and to develop environmentally sustainable solutions for food Through their 20:20 wheat programme, for example, Rothamsted scientists are working with established partners to seek ways aims to increase UK wheat yields to 20 tonnes per hectare within the next 20 years. And by making the best use of all available tools and technologies, including GM approaches, it is hoped that this ambitious target will help focus efforts to create multiple technologies that could benefit the quantity and quality of wheat harvests around the world. Getting stable wheat yield increases in Africa, for example, by two tonnes per hectare could also have a significant impact on global food security.
The Broadbalk experiment at Rothamsted farm Copyright Rothamsted Research

Location of the UK Research and Innovation Campuses

The Roslin Institute

Norwich Research Park Babraham Research Campus

Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences

Rothamsted Research Pirbright Research and Innovation Campus

About BBSRC
BBSRC invests in world-class bioscience research and training on behalf of the UK public. Our aim is to further scientific knowledge, to promote economic growth, wealth and job creation and to improve quality of life in the UK and beyond. Funded by Government, and with an annual budget of around 500M (2012-2013), we support research and training in universities and strategically funded institutes. BBSRC research and the people we fund are helping society to meet major challenges, including food security, green energy and healthier, longer lives. Our investments underpin important UK economic sectors, such as farming, food, industrial biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. For more information about BBSRC, our science and our impact see: www.bbsrc.ac.uk

Front cover image iStockphoto, copyright Thinkstock 2012

Produced by RCUKs internal service provider, March 2013