Tours of £44m brain imaging centre site pull in public

Members of the public have been behind the scenes of a major project to build a new £44m brain research imaging centre (CUBRIC) at the University.

CUBRIC will bring together world-leading expertise in brain mapping with the very latest in brain imaging and brain stimulation.

Research carried out at the centre will help scientists understand the causes of brain conditions such asdementia, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis.

Tours of the construction site on Maindy Road proved hugely popular as part of the national Open Doors event at the weekend.

Construction groups around the country, including BAM, who are constructing CUBRIC, opened up their building sites to the public.

Professor Derek Jones, Director of CUBRIC, said: "This is incredibly exciting time for Cardiff University, and for UK neuroscience as a whole.  This is literally the biggest neuroimaging research centre ever to have been built in the UK, and will be one of the biggest in Europe. 

"Each time I visit the site, I am constantly amazed at the scale of the project and just how quickly the team is turning our vision from a paper sketch to reality.  All along, we've had great interactions with BAM, who have worked closely with the CUBRIC team to ensure that we can deliver a globally unique imaging centre on time that is fit for purpose."

The new CUBRIC will further the University's world-leading research which has already established Cardiff as one of the UK's top three universities for Neuroimaging, Psychology and Psychiatry.

Scheduled to open in Spring 2016, it will be four times larger than the University's existing brain research imaging facilities and host a set of equipment that cannot be found together in any other centre in Europe.

There is increasing demand for this type of vital research and the CUBRIC team had already outgrown its previous premises, which opened in 2006.

The new facility will allow staff from different departments to benefit from being housed under one roof, leading to increased collaboration and innovation.

The cost of the building and cutting edge equipment includes some £15.6M in funding and grants awarded to CUBRIC researchers from organisations including the Wolfson Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Medical Research Council, and Welsh Government.

BAM recently completed the University's state-of-the-art Hadyn Ellis building, which is next to the new CUBRIC.

The new CUBRIC was designed by the global architecture firm IBI Group who also designed the Hadyn Ellis Building.