The Rosalind Franklin Institute (RFI) will build a national centre that forces physical scientists, engineers, and life scientists to work together at scale on new instruments and methods. This matters because the UK’s life sciences sector—employing over 220,000 people—relies on advances in engineering and physical sciences to create the sophisticated tools needed to study living organisms, from microbes to humans. Historically, such breakthroughs have depended on serendipity and linear innovation. The RFI aims to replace that luck with deliberate, large-scale collaboration between academia and industry, accelerating the development of disruptive technologies. If successful, the centre will directly improve medical diagnostics, drug development, and agricultural productivity by giving researchers better ways to see and measure biological processes. It will also protect and attract inward investment, create high-value jobs, and support the government’s industrial and regional growth strategies. The project is applied from the start—its purpose is to turn fundamental physical science into practical tools for healthcare, food security, and public health.
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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. 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.
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