The 27th March 2019 saw the official launch of START (Synchrotron Techniques for African Research and Technology), a £3.7M grant awarded to a consortium of researchers led by Diamond Light Source by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to work with African scientists on START.
Africa does not yet have a synchrotron light source, but African researchers are keen to apply synchrotron techniques to their research problems. The START project will fund research posts in Africa and the UK with a focus on two key areas crucial to development in Africa – energy and healthcare . The scientific results that come out of the project will be valuable in themselves, and may also lead to commercial applications, but START will also promote the development of research capabilities within Africa, and international research collaborations.
For Diamond Principal Investigator, Prof. Chris Nicklin, this will be the most important result: It is an exciting prospect to work together on these challenging problems and this funding will enable us to form very strong links at all levels, in particular helping to train the next generation of researchers in nations that have not had the chance to access and exploit synchrotron based techniques in their research. The work will focus around the development needs of African countries, driven by the Africa-based investigators and the non-government organisations (NGOs) that we have on board.