A new research Institute in Durham dedicated to finding and supporting the next Isaac Newton and future Nobel Prize winners of science has officially opened.
The Durham Institute of Research, Development, and Invention (DIRDI) is a scientific research institute established by Coltraco Ultrasonics in partnership with Durham University and based at ORBIT NETPark, Sedgefield.
The new institute aims to produce mathematical and physical science discoveries in the way revolutionary thinkers Sir Isaac Newton achieved.
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DIRDI brings together academics and industry professionals across disciplines, primarily physicists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists.
Daniel Dobrowolski, Head of DIRDI, said: “Unlike typical research institutes, DIRDI is primarily commercially funded. Through the rapid commercialisation of promising R&D lines, the freedom to explore fundamental science is sustained.
“We are empowering our members, be they academics or students to explore the science that interests them, because we believe whole-heartedly that the best minds at Durham University today are as capable of achieving great feats of discovery as the great men and women of the past.”
In the years to come, DIRDI aspires to grow and nurture its members throughout their academic and commercial careers, identifying and supporting the “Newtons” and Nobel Prize winners of the future, and delivering a critical mass of new research and scholarship.
Coltraco Ultrasonics CEO, Carl Stephen Patrick Hunter OBE, who is also Director-General of DIRDI, said: “We’re looking for the gold dust in people driven by their ambition for and love of discovery and we want to inspire the extraordinary.
“Our twin objectives are to identify the next Newton whomever he or she may be and to create a unique environment for our brightest undergraduate scientists to transition within our Institute to postgraduate levels and provide our country with a “pipeline” of future British Nobel Prize winners for science.
“If we are successful, the societal impact will mean the engendering of hope for all those who have not had the opportunities, the support or pathways to invent and bring forward their ideas having been stymied by their lack of access to university research.
Professor Paula Chadwick, from the Department of Physics at Durham University and a member of the DIRDI advisory board, added: “Colleagues and I in the Physics Department have worked very successfully with Coltraco for nearly 10 years, and countless students have benefitted from projects with them.
“This exciting new institute will, I hope, become a hub for the exchange of both applied and blue-skies scientific ideas. I look forward very much to working with the team to realise DIRDI's ambitions.”
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