Cavendish medicine

A new building at the University of Cambridge marks the permanent home of a five-year-old center launched to bring the tools of physics to clinical problems. Research at the £12 million ($18 million) Centre for the Physics of Medicine will focus on stem cells, cancer screening, the physics of the eye, and other areas.

“Our focus will be on the underlying science of disease,” says Peter Littlewood, head of Cavendish Laboratory, which manages the center. The center, Littlewood says, has spent about £3–4 million for lab equipment and salaries for four lecturers hired to seed new research; funds have come from the university, government, and private donors.

The center has already spurred collaboration among various Cambridge departments, including the physical, clinical, and life sciences; mathematics; and engineering. One of the center’s goals, says its director, Athene Donald, is to get each discipline to learn from the others. “Our plan is to promote dialog and collaboration through symposiums, graduate training programs, and interdisciplinary courses to get people fluent in more than one language of science.”