Cardiff University’s ambition to become a world leader in brain imaging research has been brought a step closer to realisation after receiving a vital funding boost worth £15.6M. Awarded by four separate funding bodies, the money will contribute to the ongoing development of a £44M state-of-the-art neuroimaging research facility. Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) will, upon completion in 2016, co-locate leading experts in neuroimaging with the very latest technology in brain imaging and stimulation.
Researchers based within CUBRIC will play a pivotal role in the global endeavour to gain clearer insights into the causes of conditions such as dementia and schizophrenia, yielding vital clues for the development of better treatments.
The new funding includes a £6.7M Clinical Research Infrastructure Initiative from the Medical Research Council (MRC), for investment in a 7 Tesla MRI system that will have a magnet strength more than twice that of standard research scanners. This will give scientists unprecedented ability to look in much higher resolution at neurodegeneration and dementia, neuroinflammation, brain repair and hypertension. The MRC made an additional contribution of £0.8M towards a 3T MRI scanner as part of the larger Dementia Platform UK.
Part of a £4.9M Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust will enable the appointment of 11 Senior Postdoctoral Fellows to CUBRIC, whose research will address the question of how health and disease influence the brain.
A £3M Strategic Equipment award from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) will be used to establish a facility within CUBRIC capable of mapping the structure of the human brain at a thousandth of a millimetre scale. This, scientists believe, will provide an unprecedented window into the brain’s structure, underpinning efforts to understand how differences in the brain’s wiring relate to differences in brain function.
Further funding for a microstructural imaging suite has been secured thanks to a £1M award from The Wolfson Foundation. The award will help turn Cardiff into a European hub for non-invasive study of neuronal disease and health, where cutting edge technology will enable researchers to view the shape, density and size of cellular structures often implicated in brain disease.
Professor Derek Jones, Director of CUBRIC, said:
“We are enormously grateful to our funders and the University for helping make our highly ambitious plans of developing a world leading brain imaging facility a reality. Existing imaging centres tend to focus on just one particular technique. Our aim is to bring together these different signals to understand exactly what we are measuring which will ultimately help fashion the optimal imaging technologies of the future.
“Our co-location alongside the Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute and the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics will maximise opportunities for translation of our developments in imaging into clinical applications.”
The new CUBRIC building is scheduled to open in Spring 2016, and will create 33 new posts.
The Cardiff University members of the teams that put the grants together:
Prof Derek Jones, Director, CUBRIC
Prof Chris Chambers, Head of Brain Stimulation, CUBRIC
Prof Kim Graham, Director of Research, School of Psychology
Prof David Linden, Head of Clinical Neuroimaging Research
Prof Krish Singh, Head of Human Electrophysiology, CUBRIC
Prof Petroc Sumner, Head of Cognitive Neuroscience, CUBRIC
Prof Richard Wise, Head of MRI, CUBRIC