Diamond Light Source Ltd

Diamond Light Source Ltd is funded by the UK Government via the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), and by the Wellcome Trust, owning 86% and 14% of the shares respectively.

The Joint Venture company was established in March 2002 to build and operate the facility. Diamond Light Source will gather a team of 300 dedicated staff, including engineers, scientists, support staff and technicians from around the world.

Diamond's Board of Directors and Diamond Chief Executive Officer appoint members for two advisory committees, bringing together international expertise on synchrotron science and machine design. The Science Advisory Committee (SAC) and the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) advise on the choice of operating parameters and review proposed synchrotron design and experiments to ensure maximum scientific return over the lifetime of the facilities. Reports from the committees and other background technical literature are available from the publications section.

Synchrotron light is an indispensable tool in many research areas including physics, chemistry, materials science and crystallography. In addition, synchrotron light is increasingly being exploited by new communities such as medicine, geological and environmental studies, structural genomics and archaeology.

Diamond is a third generation 3 Giga electron Volt synchrotron light source. Third generation light sources use arrays of magnets, called insertion devices, to generate extremely intense, narrow beams of electromagnetic light, about 10,000 times brighter than the UK’s current facility based at the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire.