Our Harwell team are focused on some incredibly exciting sectors, brushing shoulders with fellow residents who say incredible phrases like “yes, we launched our satellite into space this week”. We are very privileged to network and collaborate with businesses and people in this fantastic area.
Something a little different piqued the interest of our team recently. The Natural History Museum, isn’t something you would necessarily naturally associate with a campus focused on science and innovation, but team members from the Natural History Museum recently visited the campus. Our team were incredibly interested to learn more about the museum, what they do and what their forthcoming plans are.
The Natural History Museum hold an incredible 80 million specimens which span a period of 4.5 billion years. That’s a pretty mind blowing number of specimens to store and manage. This naturally means a huge amount of data and information too. The collections are actually incredibly useful as a scientific tool.
At the event we learnt that the Natural History Museum will be taking up residency at the Harwell campus. Exciting new neighbours for our team! Scheduled to open in 2026 the new centre will be a state of the art facility which will revolutionise research and development. 28 million of the specimens will be located in the new facility at Harwell. In a nutshell the new centre will ensure the vast amount of data available from the specimens is digitised and made available to researchers across the world.
Researchers will apply the latest techniques and technologies which include artificial intelligence and genomic analysis to the specimens to gain an understanding of natural diversity. This vitally important research and analysis will support us in addressing the big issues of our time. Huge issues such as climate change and emerging diseases.
We look forward to the facility being completed, and learning more about this fascinating project as it develops.