The chance to explore beyond the glass and steel of Crick’s facade was particularly tempting because,although I have been a curator and exhibition maker for many years,I am also a lapsed biomedical scientist.Two decades ago I ploughed through a PhD on cystic fibrosis gene therapy with Prof Bill Colledge and Prof Martin Evans in Cambridge,followed by a brief foray into virology with Professor Peter O’Hare.Then I stepped off the academic pathway and into the Science Museum and I haven’t looked back,until now...The largest biomedical research institution under one roof in Europe,the Crick is bursting with impressive credentials.It’s built for efficiency and collaboration,with over a thousand scientists-from physicists to molecular biologists-probing the biomedical challenges of our time.But what excited me the most is the way in which both the workforce and the facilities have been designed to make best use of those scientists’ time and resources.Specialist equipment and expertise-from microscopy to genomics-are clustered in what are referred to as Science Technology Platforms,while core services-from Scientific Equipment Care to Media Prep-use dedicated staff and economies of scale to take the burden of routine tasks off the scientists.It certainly puts my(very happy)experiences of the century-old Physiological J Laboratory,Cambridge in sharp relief!
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