PLANS have been submitted for the visitor centre at a £100m new disease research centre at Harwell.

The government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council sent the first designs for the Rosalind Franklin Institute to South Oxfordshire District Council this month.

The new research hub, which will employ more than 200 people, was announced in March 2017, when the Government revealed it would provide £100m funding.

It will provide a space for university researchers from Oxford and across the UK to turn discoveries in physics and chemistry into groundbreaking techniques to tackle disease.

It is named after the British scientist whose use of X-rays to study biological structures played a crucial role in the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure.

In its new submission for the visitors centre, the STFC said its ‘vision’ was to ‘grow Harwell into one of the world’s largest and most important science and innovation campuses, with even stronger links to many academic universities within a broad research and development-based community’.

It’s aim with the Rosalind Franklin Institute, it said, was to ‘enhance the national infrastructure and ultimately benefit human health’.

Speaking about the visitor centre itself, the council wrote: “The new visitors centre has been designed to provide a welcoming environment which will inspire and educate people in the amazing work of the laboratory.”

See the plans at whitehorsedc.gov.uk using reference number P18/V0506/FUL