Skip to main content

Living Systems Institute

The building

The Living Systems Institute a world-class building with state-of-the-art laboratories and close by research facilities

The £52 million LSI building provides 7500m2 of research space, including three floors of state-of the-art laboratories for cell and molecular biology research with separate hot and cold rooms, and two basement floors for laser labs, CryoEM facilities, an Insectary, and microscopy suites.

The building currently houses 26 LSI research groups and 3 affiliate groups with around 200 researchers, with complementary expertise in biosciences, medicine, physics, mathematics, and computer science.

The high-quality research labs, tissue culture suites, Insectary facilities, bioimaging facilities, laser labs, Cryo-EM facilities, SEM facilities and mass spectrometry labs, enable the multiscale analysis of the precise operation of living systems. The research groups are fully equipped to support multidisciplinary approaches to study organelles, cells, and organisms.

LSI researchers have access to a wide range of resources under one roof, including: a large Aquatic Resources Centre housing several aquatic species, the Bioimaging Centre equipped with state-of the-art light and electron microscopes, the University of Exeter Sequencing Service with leading-edge genomics and bioinformatics analysis, the Centre for Cytomics providing the next generation of flow cytometry systems for quantitative single-cell research, and a large Biological Services Unit.

The LSI is the hub that physically connects the Biosciences Building/Geoffrey Pope and the Physics Buildings and is in close proximity to the Mathematics and Engineering buildings, enabling easy interaction for researchers between these departments.

Researchers and students in the LSI also benefit from spacious, staff and research offices, meeting rooms and a 90-seat seminar room enabling space to disseminate discoveries and teach students alongside collaborative and informal communal spaces to maximise opportunities for discussion, foster collaborations and research culture amongst senior and junior researchers and students.