A NEW £100m research institute will create hundreds of jobs, it has been confirmed.

Administrative, technical and housekeeping staff will be recruited from the local area to support world-leading research at the new Rosalind Franklin Institute at Harwell, near Didcot.

The institute, for which the Government announced £100m funding last week, is expected to employ more than 200.

It is also hoped the complex will spawn spin-out businesses capitalising on the groundbreaking research within.

This is the vision of the man who has led its development until now – Oxford University physics professor Ian Walmsley.

The university's Pro-Vice-Chancellor for research and innovation says the new facility will be unique in the world in what it hopes to achieve.

Specifically, that is providing an incubation hub for university researchers to turn discoveries in physics and chemistry into groundbreaking techniques to tackle disease.

Prof Walmsley said its purpose and function is best demonstrated by the women for whom it is named: Rosalind Franklin. She was the early 20th century physicist whose use of X-Rays to image molecules enabled Watson and Crick to discover the double-helix structure of DNA.

Prof Walmsley explained: "Some of the research at universities may be blue-sky thinking, but this will be a hub where we can go and work with experts in the life sciences; work with experts in different disciplines to facilitate cross-fertilisation of ideas.

"It is about taking advanced methods and technology from the physical sciences like X-Ray structure determination and microscopy and seeing how those can be applied to some of the underpinning problems in the life sciences: this is the early-stage part of the discovery in those life sciences.

"Eventually we have in mind that this will feed into other institutes doing drug discovery."

One example of a potentially fruitful area of research is photoacoustic imaging: using laser light to excite sound waves to image parts of the body.

Scientists at Oxford and at University College London are already exploring the technique but at the Rosalind Franklin Institute they could come and work together.

Prof Walmsley said: "The way it is set up and what it will do is unique.

"Of course there is lots of inspiration from around the world but this is an area where we see the UK as having strength.

"It's not just scientists daydreaming – sometimes that's very helpful, but this is really about saying 'I've got an interesting idea, can we develop this further?'

"It's an interesting phase that sits between blue-sky thinking and the full commercial end."

Harwell Campus management director William Cooper said the institute would help solidify Oxfordshire's position as the 'Silicon Valley' of the UK.

Prof Walmsley and his team hope that the formal structure for the institute will take shape this year and building at Harwell could start in the next two years.