What we do

STFC makes it possible for a broad range of scientists to do the highest quality research, tackling some of the most fundamental scientific questions. We do this by:

• funding researchers in universities directly through grants particularly in astronomy, particle physics, space science and nuclear physics.
  
  
• providing in the UK access to world-class facilities, including ISIS (link opens in a new window), the Central Laser Facility (link opens in a new window), and High-End Computing Terascale Resource (link opens in a new window) (HECToR). We are also a major stakeholder in the Diamond Light Source, which started operations in 2007.
  
  
• providing in the UK a broad range of scientific and technical expertise in space and ground-based astronomy technologies, microelectronics, wafer scale manufacturing, particle and nuclear physics, alternative energy production, radio communications and radar.
  
  
• providing access to world-class facilities overseas, including through CERN (link opens in a new window), the European Space Agency (link opens in a new window) (ESA), the European Southern Observatory (link opens in a new window) (ESO), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and telescope facilities in Chile (link opens in a new window), Hawaii (link opens in a new window), La Palma (link opens in a new window) and the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, which includes the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory.

We supply highly skilled scientists and engineers and generate ideas and technologies that have a much broader social and economic impact.

We encourage researchers to create new businesses based on their discoveries and we help established companies to use the fruits of our research as the basis of new or improved products and services.

The Council distributes public money from the Government to support scientific research. Between 2008 and 2009 we will invest approximately £787 million.

The STFC was formed as a new Research Council on 1 April 2007 through a merger of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) and the transfer of responsibility for nuclear physics from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). We are one of seven national research councils (link opens in a new window) in the UK.