The Rosalind Franklin Institute is building three new microscope components to watch molecules move inside living cells at the atomic scale. This matters because today’s imaging tools force a trade-off: you can see fine detail in dead, frozen samples, or watch living processes unfold at blurry resolution. The Institute’s “correlated imaging” theme aims to break that barrier by combining multiple imaging methods across scales from centimetres down to picometres. The three components funded here—an aberration-corrected pulsed electron microscope, a dual-beam focused ion beam platform, and a fast direct electron detector using a gallium arsenide sensor—will let researchers track dynamic events like protein folding or drug binding as they happen, atom by atom. If successful, the technology could transform how scientists understand disease mechanisms and how drugs work inside cells. It may also enable non-invasive diagnosis of conditions that currently require biopsies. The project directly supports the UK’s life sciences sector, which employs over 220,000 people, by creating high-value jobs and attracting inward investment. While the immediate work is fundamental methods development, past advances in electron microscopy have led to breakthroughs from mRNA vaccine design to battery materials—similar unexpected applications are plausible here.
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The Life Sciences sector forms a key part of the UK economy: it employs over 220,000 people, contributes significantly to GDP and UK balance of trade, and is crucial for developing leading-edge treatments for patients. It is underpinned by the UK's world-leading research base in the health and life sciences. Many key research breakthroughs are, in turn, enabled by advances in engineering and physical sciences (EPS) research - which provide ever more sophisticated instrumentation and methods to support the study of living organisms (from microbes to plants, animals and the human body) and biological processes (including both disease pathology and drug action). R&D across all parts of this ecosystem - from fundamental understanding to applied research to product development - is crucial for the delivery of long-term economic growth and continued advances in agriculture, food security, healthcare and public health. Historic models of innovation have often been linear, involving a degree of serendipity. Disruptive technologies and scientific breakthroughs will be accelerated if physical scientists, engineers, life scientists and industry work together, and at scale. This is the domain of the Rosalind Franklin Institute (RFI): with a focal point (Hub) at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, linked to formal Spokes in leading HEIs across the UK, it will integrate complementary expertise from academia and industry to create a national centre of excellence for methods development at the convergence of the physical and life sciences. A key component of the RFI is to develop disruptive next-generation correlated imaging technologies across cm-pm length scales and including temporal and spectral correlation (the correlated imaging, CI Theme) that will enable step changes in our understanding of cell and disease biology, and the non-invasive diagnosis and treatment of some conditions. It will create high-value jobs, protect and attract inward investment, and drive long-term growth; and contribute to the delivery of the Government's innovation, industrial and regional strategies. This grant is to support the design and development of three key components for the next generation of CI ( as detailed in the science and business cases approved by BEIS) namely an aberration corrected pulsed electron microscope for visualising dynamic events at the atomic level; a dual beam FIB which forms a platform for the development of integrated hardware and software and a fast direct electron detector including a sensor based on GaAs.
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