{"id":540886,"date":"2026-07-09T11:19:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540886\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T11:19:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:19:12","slug":"aston-university-unveils-new-6-million-membrane-research-facility-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540886\/","title":{"rendered":"Aston University unveils new \u00a36 million membrane research facility | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aston University has officially opened a new research facility focused on developing and studying membranes<\/a>, for applications such as water purification and drug discovery. Officials hope that the lab\u2019s open-plan design will help foster collaboration between scientists and accelerate scientific discovery.<\/p>\n

\"Lord<\/p>\n

In 2024, Aston received \u00a310 million in funding from Research England<\/a> to establish the new facility, known as the Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence (Aime). After two years of construction, the UK\u2019s minister for science, Patrick Vallance<\/a>, has now officially opened the \u00a36.1 million laboratory. Aime will house around 60 scientists, including PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and technicians.<\/p>\n

Research will focus on designing and studying the properties of biological and synthetic membranes, including those involved in disease, waste remediation and purifying water. For example, biochemist Alice Rothnie<\/a> is developing techniques to extract cell membrane proteins<\/a> without damaging their structure, which could help scientists better understand how drugs work.<\/p>\n

Vallance noted that the Aime Laboratory is an important moment \u2018for the research expertise based here in Birmingham and for the wider UK science community \u2013 helping drive growth and delivering the innovations that will improve lives\u2019.<\/p>\n

The opening of the lab comes one year after Aston stopped admitting chemistry undergraduate students<\/a> owing to financial struggles and \u2018changes in educational focus and alignment\u2019.<\/p>\n

Directors of the new facility, Roslyn Bill<\/a> and Paul Topham<\/a>, think that Aime will \u2018transform\u2019 the way that science is carried out. \u2018By bringing together researchers from across biology, chemistry, physics and engineering in a purpose-designed environment, we have created the conditions for ideas to be exchanged more freely, collaborations to develop more naturally and discoveries to be translated more rapidly into real-world impact.\u2019 In the eyes of Bill and Topham, \u2018the laboratory itself is an active partner in the research it enables\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston University has officially opened a new research facility focused on developing and studying membranes, for applications such…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":["post-540886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}