LEADING scientists and doctors were in the region yesterday to mark a double celebration.

The official opening of the new £10m Wolfson Research Institute by Baroness Susan Greenfield coincided with the tenth anniversary of Durham University Stockton campus.

When it opened in 1992, the campus had just 190 students. Now, it has 1,700 and is set for further expansion.

The sleek, glass-fronted riverside buildings of the Wolfson Institute is crammed with research facilities covering everything from the study of infectious disease to the efficient running of the NHS.

Baroness Greenfield, an eminent Oxford-based scientist and the Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, said the new Wolfson institute looked "fabulous".

She said it was vital to raise the profile of science in our increasingly complex world.

Too many people still thought of scientists as "dysfunctional nerds trying to take over the world" when they needed to realise that it would change everything.

"We have only scratched the surfaces of what technology is going to mean to our lives. We will become people of the screen rather than the people of the book," she said.

Baroness Greenfield said she was also impressed by the way the university was trying to recruit people from more varied backgrounds and predicted that scientific research would inevitably lead to more partnerships with private industry.

To mark the anniversary, honorary degrees were conferred on the two former Vice-Chancellors of Durham University who helped turn the campus dream into reality: Emeritus Professor Sir Frederick Holliday and Emeritus Professor Evelyn Ebsworth.

Honorary degrees were also conferred on two North-Easterners who became major figures in the world of medicine: acclaimed neurologist Lord Walton of Detchant and former president of the General Medical Council Sir Donald Irvine.